


the world is a curse (it’ll kill if you let it)

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Attempted Sexual Assault, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Dreams and Nightmares, Embedded Images, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Hopeful Ending, Incest, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Mutual Masturbation, Parent/Child Incest, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Dynamics, Prison, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:20:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22741636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: “Tell me: how many?” Martin beams, not even questioning if Malcolm would be capable of murder. This is music to him. A long awaited debut album he’s been trying to get made since Malcolm was eighteen. Maybe a decade before that if Malcolm’s darkest fears about his own memory are correct.[A canon divergent AU of the pilot where Malcolm never lost his job and goes undercover in Claremont to gain Martin’s trust in order to catch the copycat killer.]
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Martin Whitly
Comments: 88
Kudos: 210





	1. crawl a mile in a desolate place

**Author's Note:**

> Title from High Enough by K.Flay aka a solid 25% of my Malcolm playlist. The prologue is in Martin’s POV, but everything else will be Malcolm’s. Explicit rating is for the fic as a whole, not this chapter. Additional content warnings include: a vomiting scene.

Claremont is a dedicated correctional facility meant to house the well-off malefactor who can’t be trusted on work release programs, and who requires more individualized psychiatric care than a larger facility can provide. Or, that was the intent twenty years ago; now, it’s as threatened by overcrowding as any other prison in the state or federal system.

Money may have helped Martin avoid the death penalty and ensure a steady supply of both reading material and two-ply toilet paper, but it can only forestall a downgrade in his comfort for so long. They’ve already been giving him extra recreation time to retrofit his cell with an eye for doubling up, probably intending to saddle him with someone like Ridley, who is at least tolerable when not trying to convince the other inmates to join in on his delusional fantasy life.

A preference for a private cell hardly means Martin enjoys isolation. Rather the opposite, and he carefully regulates his behavior to allow for taking his meals in the cafeteria whenever possible. Today, as he’s escorted in, there’s a buzz in the air, the sort of excitable murmuring amongst the tables that often signals fresh meat.

“Who’s the newbie?” he asks the guard shadowing him. He nods towards the tight cluster of chattering idiots who are always the first to swarm a new face. The usual lunchroom CO keeps a close watch on the knot of patients, and Martin can barely see the crown of the man’s head as he holds court with the gaggle of bootlickers.

“Your kind of psycho,” Martin’s escort replies.

“A murderer? How exciting. Or do you mean serial killer…? What’s his body count?”

“Less than yours, I’m sure, Dr. Whitly.”

“Flatterer,” Martin says, but then, when the group shifts and the man lifts his head enough for Martin to get a clear look at the shape of him—the nape of his neck, his shoulders, the trim narrowing towards his waist—Martin slows and smiles. “Ohhh, on second thought I wouldn’t be so sure.”

* * *

  
_mood board by tess_genor_

* * *

_A few weeks earlier_

Coming up out of Penn station, Malcolm spots Gil almost immediately. He’s not entirely inconspicuous waiting at his car near the line of cabs. The Le Mans stands out anywhere, but especially in Manhattan. The moment Gil catches sight of Malcolm he pushes away from the hood and comes striding towards him, steps quickly eating the distance between them.

“Bright! I didn’t think you’d say yes, but then I get a call from your supervisor today that you’re on your way. You couldn’t tell me yourself, city boy?”

“Well,” Malcolm says as he approaches, “to be completely honest, I almost didn’t agree to consult; this isn’t the sort of thing I really want to get involved with. But I owe you one, don’t I, Lieutenant.”

He eases his duffel off his shoulder and drops it to let Gil pull him into a hug. It’s nice. He still smells the same, lived-in leather and bay rum aftershave; after a heartbeat, Malcolm relaxes into the embrace.

“That’s debatable. Still, I’m glad you’re here, kid,” Gil tells him, and gives him one last squeeze plus a hearty clap on the back that drives the breath from his lungs. At the car, Gil pops the trunk to load in Malcolm’s bag. “Fingers crossed I’m wrong about this case, and I don’t actually need your crazy ass.”

“I hope so.”

The idea of the Surgeon having a copycat has been eating at Malcolm for days now, sitting leaden in the pit of his stomach since he’d first received the email from Gil. On the train ride up, he’d skimmed the reports with a trembling hand, and it isn’t looking good. _’Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, blah blah blah…’_ Except two women with the same rope marks in addition to the injections already screams pattern.

He’d also called his sister from the train to let her know he was going to be back in the city, and Malcolm could hear it in her voice that she was hiding something, which meant a scoop, which meant another body… which meant Gil picking him up in the middle of the workday probably has to do with—

“We have a third body?” Malcolm asks as Gil navigates through Midtown traffic.

“Maybe.”

Sometimes, Malcolm hates being right.

Gil introduces him to the team at the crime scene. The pair of detectives from Major Crimes are understandably prickly—interagency operations rarely go smoothly.

“So, this is a federal case now?” JT asks when it takes Malcolm all of two minutes to confirm Gil’s suspicions. 

“I’m just here to consult,” Malcolm assures the guy. He’s pretty sure the Bureau loaned him to Gil less because of his unique expertise and more to try and foster a bit of goodwill with a major police force after ‘every cop between DC and Tennessee’ had tried to get him canned for his handling of the Springer case. If he can get the NYPD to owe them some favors, the higher-ups will turn a blind eye to the bent rules and badly ruffled feathers that went along with that broken nose and help hasten shoving that mess under the rug. It’s still very thin ice to be on.

It feels thinner still with the truth staring up at him in the shape of a body. He clenches his hand and puts on a smile; if he believes that he’ll catch the perpetrator, he can make it a reality. _My presence is my power._

But, in truth, he’s not at all prepared to see his father’s handiwork—imitated or otherwise—in the literal flesh. Let alone three-fourths of the Quartet.

That night Malcolm sleeps so poorly that the basic under-bed restraints he brought with him to the hotel nearly work their way loose by morning. He sits at the edge of the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose as exhaustion burns behind his eyes. Three hours with only one long, sleepless break in the middle isn’t the worst, but it’s going to drag at him throughout the day. He sighs and stands, rubbing at his wrists and hating that he’ll probably need to bind his ankles tonight to be safe and keep the travel restraints in place. Being that restricted isn’t a sensation he particularly enjoys outside of a session. Waking up when his legs are trapped can be just as terrifying as the nightmares. There’s an alternative, but….

He wrestles with a very different sort of dread as he chokes down pills and breakfast and summons up the nerve to call his mother and ask if she’s put everything in storage or kept his loft livable.

“I would hardly call that space livable, Malcolm,” she replies. “You know you have a perfectly good room here in the house whenever you want it.”

He puts his hand briefly over the speaker and silently screams his frustration until he can calmly reply. “Mother, just answer me: is my bed still there and usable? I’ll be in the city for a while on a case. I need a safe place to sleep.”

“Have your night terrors worsened again?” she asks, and where Malcolm is generally so good at reading people, he can still never quite tell if her concern is genuine. “Why don’t you—”

“Quit my job?” Malcolm says, interrupting the lecture before it has a chance to gain momentum. “People are counting on me. If you don’t want me to use the place, fine. I’m sure the concierge here will be happy to help me figure out a solution.” 

“Don’t be silly. Everything is still there. I’ll have Luisa go by and stock the fridge and make sure everything is all ready for you.”

He grinds out a thank you and a vague promise of seeing her and Ainsley for dinner before finishing his coffee and heading to the precinct.

* * *

The countdown towards a fourth body leaves a lot of tension in the air as Malcolm gets to know the team and the case better.

Holed up inside the situation room, he sifts through files and his own notes for what must be the twentieth time. Frustratingly, nothing new floats to the surface, and he tosses the autopsy photos towards the other end of the table to be free of them for a bit—those three submissives had _trusted_ the man that did this to them. He leans back in his chair, rubbing his hands over his face. He must look like shit. He certainly feels like it.

He spots Gil stepping out of his office to head straight for Dani’s desk, and the way he moves reveals a similar restlessness; he’s looking for an update—anything to show progress on a case that’s sitting too close to home for the both of them.

God. He’d thought he’d finally left this behind ten years ago. Gil probably feels the same way. The minute the trial was over, it was like Martin stopped existing to him. That is until it came out that, as soon as Malcolm turned eighteen, he’d been visiting his father unsupervised. 

Malcolm hadn’t told Gil for a reason. The secret had almost driven a wedge between them too big to overcome, but somehow Malcolm had managed to tell him bits and pieces of the whole truth: that he’d been considering law enforcement, that he knew seeing Martin was bad for his mental health, and that he needed help.

What he hadn’t told Gil was that he had felt like an addict hooked to a drug and chasing that first perfect high over and over again until it was killing him. That every, single time a part of him wondered if there was a way to make Martin better. He’d gotten over that fantasy, but seeing Martin hadn’t been his only self-destructive habit in his late teens and early twenties. Gil and Jackie had been the ones who had gotten him through it all in one piece. 

Malcolm reaches across the table to gather another stack of folders and keeps a watchful eye on Dani and Gil. She’s on the phone, but Malcolm can see that she’s on hold. She places a hand over the receiver regardless as she looks up at her boss.

“Did the banks release those records yet?” Gil asks. He props his hands on his hips in part to keep them occupied, and in part because there will always be a bit of the beat cop in him.

“One of the vics didn’t control any of their own finances, so we’re still waiting on permission, and there’s a problem with the system for the other two,” Dani says. “Same bank. They’re working on it.”

“Tell them to work faster. We need to find this guy, and this is the best lead we’ve got.”

In the end, they arrive at the dom’s apartment building a few minutes too late. An explosion blows out the windows and sets off car alarms up and down the block, and when the body in apartment J comes back identified as Nico Stavros, Malcolm knows their killer has just cleaned up a loose end and dropped them right back at square one.

Later, when Gil shows him the drawings FID had found in what was left of the apartment, a fresh chill takes up residence in Malcolm’s guts. He can feel the shape of the question Gil’s holding back; the thing he wants to ask but cares too deeply about Malcolm to put into words.

Malcolm rubs absently at his shaking knuckles. “My father has got to know something,” he says, naming the elephant and already working out solutions. There truly aren’t that many options, and all of them lead to places he doesn’t want to go. Chiefly, Claremont. “I need to go inside.”

“I don’t want to ask you to do that, kid.”

“I know, and you’re not going to like what I’m going to suggest, either, because I don’t mean a visit with a guard perched at the door. I need my father to think I’m on his side.”

Understanding Malcolm’s intent immediately, Gil’s rebuke is sharp and swift. “Out of the question. There’s no chance I’m letting you go in there undercover. Malcolm, that’s insane.”

“If we get a fourth body, the guy’s not going to stop, and you remember what the next set was like. He’s accelerating, this killer, and learning quickly,” Malcolm stares out over the city, the glitter that’s never going to stop feeling like home. “This is going to get uglier, and if the copycat has Martin’s help, that’s a lot of lives at risk.”

“We’ll do the legwork, we’ll figure this out.”

* * *

After the Quartet is complete, it’s less than a week before the bodycount hits five. The killer’s methodology for choosing new victims remains opaque, and he’s clearly evolving. The fourth body in the Quartet hadn’t borne any rope marks, a consequence perhaps of uncovering the first three’s connection to Stavros. A killer with enough intelligence and control to change tactics is alarming enough, but on this latest body, the wound pattern is even more aggressive. If he finishes this new set, he might not remain a copycat. 

Reluctantly, Gil relents and okays Malcolm’s plan. Which is a good thing, because Malcolm had already gone behind Gil’s back and done all the paperwork with the Bureau over a week prior.

“Can’t believe they fast-tracked this,” Gil says, dropping the communique in front of Malcolm. “Looks like you got your wish, Special Agent Bright.”

Titles, cool. That doesn’t sting. Malcolm runs a hand through his hair and looks up at Gil. “It’s not as if I’m going to enjoy this. It wasn’t exactly a healthy relationship ten years ago, and this is going to be… tricky.”

Gil visibly softens. He leans down and lowers his voice, his hand flattening to the table and corded with tension. “C’mon, kid. There’s got to be another way.”

“There isn’t time. We might have more to go on if I could interview Berkhead. Men like him—wealthy, connected, willing to exploit the system—it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’s a sociopath like half the CEOs out there.”

“Well, he’s connected alright, and he had a solid alibi for more than one killing. Brass and that army of lawyers Berkhead’s got isn’t going to let you anywhere near him without probable cause.”

“Which brings us right back to that fact that my father is our best option. If I go in to interview Martin under the Bureau’s authority, he’s going to play games in order to control me, and you, and this case via the flow of information. You know that. If he believes I’m finally following in his footsteps, he’ll be far more likely to tell us what we need to know. Maybe we’ll even learn something about the Surgeon’s unknown victims.”

Gil pulls a face and takes the chair next to Malcolm. “I know you think—”

Malcolm is tired. Tired of arguing and tired of waiting for another body to hit the morgue from a killer the media was already calling the Surgeon’s Apprentice. Tired of seeing that box in his nightmares and having zero leads beyond his own faulty memory.

“Martin kept every mention of me that hit the papers from kindergarten to age ten. He’ll have kept doing that, even in prison. He’s not an annihilator, Gil, his obsession with me is what’s going to keep me safe. I can do this. You have to trust me.”

Gil exhales slowly and a deep furrow appears between his brows. “I do trust you, but Jackie’s not here to worry about you anymore so…” he trails off with a faint and fond smile before he sets his hand to Malcolm’s back. The rest of the team doesn’t know their background, only that Gil’s known him since he was a boy. What must it look like to them? That he’s some weird rich boy pity case? Not far from the truth, he supposes.

“Once you sign those, you’ll be put in the system. Dani has experience in undercover ops, so she’s in charge of organizing communication protocol and an outline of the contingency plan, not you,” Gil says, emphasizing the last part. “The Bureau has one agent transferring in as a temporary CO, but Claremont doesn’t see the sort of overtime that other facilities suffer, so to avoid suspicion he’ll only be stationed there twice a week: Thursdays and Sundays. That’s not a lot of backup, so hopefully you get what we need fast and we can pull you out in a couple days tops.”

“I can do this.”

“I know you can. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Well,” Malcolm says, staring at the trembling of his fingers as he draws in a deep steadying breath, “that makes two of us.”

* * *

_**Day One, Monday: the welcome wagon**_

Malcolm goes through processing with a single-minded focus. Terror is a constant buzz in the back of his skull, and he fights against its constant screaming for him to turn around and run, to flee before he’s standing in front of Martin again and caught in the trap of his father’s easy smile.

There’s a constant burning in his throat as he’s shown to his cell for the first time.

Claremont has two main wings joined together in the middle by shared facilities. Malcolm had sought to be embedded in the same wing as his father, but that was one part of the plan that Gil remained steadfastly against. It’s frustrating, but he can’t blame Gil for looking out for him, even if it’s going to make his job harder in the end.

Without the ability to shout down the hallways or convince a guard to play courier and pass notes back and forth all day, Malcolm will need to make do with getting the information he needs during meal and recreation time. Which means a lot of waiting. He sits on the edge of the bunk and scans his temporary new residence. It’s a far cry from the relative luxury that Martin enjoys on the other side of the building. Malcolm’s cell is a standard five-by-ten space with no rows of books, no rug to hide the pitted concrete of the floor, no room for a full-sized writing desk and chair. He’d been permitted no personal items aside from a set of colored pencils no longer than his thumb, a notepad, and the restraints looped through the frame of the bunk. The freedom to buy additional items from the commissary won’t be allowed until he proves he can follow rules.

Absently, he rubs his wrists. It took a fairly sizable bribe for the administration to allow him to use them on his own recognizance, and the risk of being prescribed sedatives remains worryingly high.

With any luck, the COs won’t be punitive and will treat him like Martin, more interested in the dollars in his trust fund than making his life miserable.

He closes his eyes and spends an hour meditating, and afterwards, still facing another hour until mealtime, Malcolm gets to his feet, stretching his arms high overhead and figuring he might as well pass the time with some yoga. He slips out of the soft-soled shoes they’d given him and grounds his feet, drawing in a breath that fills his belly, the exhale taking out some of the restlessness that’s trying to creep back into him.

He starts his practice, but before he’s able to find his center, he’s thrown off balance by the ugly memory of being barefoot in the basement, the chill of the stone numbing his toes. He has to open his eyes to avoid picturing the box yawning like a hungry trap as he goes into a forward fold. The box always seems to be waiting for him, ready to snap him up and lock him in there with the nameless girl’s body.

A series of deep breaths and repeating a remembered affirmation steadies him again, and he resumes the flow, eventually finding a bit of clarity and calm.

Between the yoga and doing some mindfulness meditation, he’s feeling remarkably centered and alert when he’s released from his cell and taken to the cafeteria. It goes to a hush briefly as the scatter of inmates recognizes that he’s a new face. A special case—like Martin—who requires a personal escort to and from his cell.

A few men rise to their feet once he’s gotten a tray and moved through the line. They wait as he’s served and come to circle around him, not as threats but as gadflies. Malcolm profiles each and every one of them on autopilot. None are a serious threat; they’re the remoras of this place, seeking to feed off his status or take in gossip to trade. He lets them draw him back to sit with them, clocking the people they shy away from as he takes a seat. He ends up with the door behind him, which brings the anxiety gnawing at the edges of his calm, but he reminds himself that no one here knows he’s law enforcement or Martin’s son. To them, he’s just another killer.

The inmates ask him question after question, and he answers them with as little duplicity as he can. Many have nothing at all to do with him and everything to do with what’s happening outside.

All at once, there’s a ripple in the room; a whispering murmur that gathers glances as it spreads. Martin, he thinks. _Knows._ He tracks the eyelines of his seatmates until he feels the heat of a body coming up behind him. Despite expecting it, he can’t help but go tense when a hand brushes lightly across his shoulder as Martin skirts the table with a tray in hand.

“Doctor Whitly,” Malcolm says, glancing up only when Martin takes the seat across from him. The other patients scatter like birds. The tension stays in his shoulders, something Martin can surely see.

Alone with him at the table, Martin looks him up and down. “A special agent in Claremont for murder and not a word in the press…. How _does_ that happen?” he asks quietly with shrewd and sly intimation.

Rather than fight the flinch that a hit so close to the truth triggers, Malcolm lets it show. “Former special agent,” he says, aiming to get Martin to associate his unease with the crumbling of his career and not the sudden fear that he truly can’t do this. “Word will get out eventually, I’m sure. Not a lot of people know who I am.”

“Well, _former_ Special Agent Bright, if no one knows, mums the word. It’ll be our little secret,” Martin whispers.

Malcolm’s stomach goes ice cold, something primal and terrifying stirred up at the way Martin says ‘our little secret’ and a flash of almost-memory. There are so many gaps in his past and things he doesn’t know about himself. He's spent ten years trying to be okay with that, trying desperately to fill in the void where his childhood should be.

“My boy, you worked so hard to earn that job. What were you thinking?”

It had been harder than Martin could ever know. Changing his name was the easy part. Malcolm swallows and clenches his fingers tight. “That I wasn’t going to get caught, for one.”

“Like father like son,” Martin quips, and then he smiles broadly and reaches for Malcolm. He takes Malcolm’s trembling hand in his own. “I can’t say that I’m glad you’re here or that your psychogenic tremor is still affecting you, but I am _very_ happy to see you. It’s been so _long,_ Malcolm. Look at you.”

It’s harder than he’d expected to be face-to-face with Martin again. When you’re in a room with him, everything revolves around him. He creates his own gravity.

Martin retrieves his hands before the guards object. “Tell me: how many?” He beams, not even questioning if Malcolm would even be capable of murder. This is music to him. A long-awaited debut album he’s been trying to get made since Malcolm was eighteen. Maybe a decade before that if Malcolm’s darkest fears about his own memory are correct.

A trickle like ice water runs down Malcolm’s spine, and he closes his eyes, breathes deep, and weaves the lie that will seduce his father most completely. He’s already thought it through: enough kills to impress, but not enough to rival Martin’s count. “Eleven. Thirteen if you count the need to clean up loose ends.”

“And how many did they know of?”

“Two.”

He sits back, pride written all over him until a heartbeat later his expression tilts to concern. “So what happened, Malcolm?”

“Well, the one that got me cau—”

“Not the murders. Tell me about those later. I mean it’s been what, ten years without a visit? Not even a letter? I want to hear about _you._ ”

* * *

Once he’s back in the safety of his cell, Malcolm vomits up every single thing he’d eaten and collapses into the narrow space between the toilet and the wall. He’d held it together well enough, but now, without all those eyes on him—without Martin’s eyes on him—everything he’d kept under a tight lid bubbles up.

He buries his face in his hands, sucking down air by the lungful to hold for a count of eight. Over and over. Until his hands stop their tingling, and he feels like he can stand again. He clambers to his feet to brush the bitterness from his mouth and finds he has to hold the toothbrush in his fist like a child, his fingers too weak around the plastic for finesse.

There are tears stinging behind his eyes. Some of it is his body reacting to violently rejecting everything he’d put in his stomach, but it’s not only that. There’s a confusing miasma roiling inside him—disgust and terror and a dozen other things. He’d known seeing Martin again would stir up a whole host of emotion.

Malcolm stares blankly at his fingers. His father’s touch had been so firm and yet so gentle. How can he still crave Martin’s tenderness after all this time? His stomach heaves, and he grips at the edge of the sink, but there’s nothing left in him but acid.

The rest of the day he doesn’t leave his bunk, staying curled on his side and fingering the soft leather of the restraints. If he manages to sleep when it’s lights out, what’s going to come calling? And if he can’t sleep, will he be sharp enough to keep Martin from guessing the truth?


	2. do you see anyone other than me?

_**Day Two, Tuesday: the exercise yard** _

Malcolm’s first night in Claremont is shockingly restful. Even during the day, the other cells echo with random shouts and cries, moans and wailing, and at night, the outbursts are less frequent but regular. The noise doesn’t wake him when he finally slips into dreaming. If anything, it does the opposite—his subconscious calmed by the fact that he doesn’t need to worry about shouting himself awake here like he might in a hotel room. No one’s going to call the front desk in fear or make a noise complaint. No one here is going to do so much as blink if he slams into the wall and screams himself hoarse.

Restful isn’t peaceful, though. He wakes up struggling to push away something twice his size and full of smiles. He’s left lying there with a racing heart and chafed wrists, but the worst of the sensations dissipate like smoke as his eyes open; a welcome change from feeling like he needs to assess his surroundings to ensure nothing's followed him out of the hallways of his mind and hidden away in the darkened corners of his cell. An unexpected perk of waking up in a tiny concrete square instead of his condo in DC or his old loft in Nolita.

Everything here is regimented and on a schedule, and from what he’s seen so far, it works generally as it’s supposed to. A daily regimen is something Malcolm knows well. Sitting up with a groan, he unclips his wrists and shakes out his hands before he takes out his mouthguard to rinse it, then brushes his teeth, takes a piss, and recites an affirmation to the mirror from memory.

_I will always find something to appreciate around me._

He shares a shrug with his reflection.

Beyond that, the only real change in his morning routine is waiting for the nurse to do rounds instead of flipping on the stereo and taking his meds immediately. Here, medications are dispensed at roughly eight o’clock with all four pills in a little paper cup passed through the slot in the door. When they arrive, Malcolm inspects each of them, and they’re all the right shape and dose. Then, it’s back to waiting around for what the whiteboard tacked up outside his row of cells informs him will be recreation time.

* * *

Since Claremont is classified as a psychiatric facility and not a standard prison, rec time isn’t a daily occurence required by law, but rather handled like a class. Today it’s from nine to eleven with time to shower before a mid-day meal, and he discovers it’s held, not in any sort of outdoor facility or gymnasium, but in an oddly-shaped room with only an old punching bag, a few medicine balls, a scatter of tennis balls, and not much else. The other inmates from his ward split off the moment they’re escorted in, a few of them going straight for the tennis balls and the others to mill about with the people with whom they’ve clearly bonded.

Martin, who is already here and perched atop a bright orange medicine ball, waves him over. “You weren’t expecting a weight room were you?” he says, lightly bouncing on the ball in a way that would seem ridiculous if Malcolm weren’t so on edge. Without his cardigan draped around him, Martin looks far more menacing, the muscles in his thick forearms strong and corded. “This isn’t a penitentiary. You think they’re going to give a bunch of crazies like us something that could be used to bludgeon a man?”

“What kind of exercise do they expect us to do?”

Martin shrugs and glances down at the ball he’s perched on. When Malcolm doesn’t react, he arches a brow. “Do I detect a hint of inmate’s rights activism, Malcolm? It suits you. How about we write some letters on craft day,” he says. “I have quite a few fans who would love to help spread the word.”

Of course the incarcerated have rights. The justice system is terribly flawed, but for the most part Malcolm believes in it. Besides, his work has always focused on the type of criminal whose roots aren’t so easily traced back to systemic societal ills. Still, the minute Martin suggests it, the idea of advocacy becomes poison. Somehow his father will twist it and turn it to his benefit. 

Suddenly, Martin ceases his gentle bouncing to lean forward and pin Malcolm with a keen look. “A better idea: we could go on a hunger strike in service of the cause. Your sister might want to do a piece on it!”

“I’ll make do,” Malcolm says, cutting Martin off before he’s not simply throwing ideas into the ether but planning to follow up on them. Which possibly means he is denying something to others purely to spite Martin, but getting roped into following his father’s will so quickly is… dangerous.

He grabs a ball and mat and sets up a simple circuit: pull-ups on a bar that may or may not be meant for the purpose, jackknifes and core-stabilizing planks on the ball, push-ups. Martin watches, still bouncing lightly, and offers to keep count.

Every so often he pipes up to critique Malcolm’s form, each reminder rooted in anatomy as if harkening back to the days when he would spread out his illustrations and teach Malcolm so lovingly about the way muscles and tendons and joints worked. At the same time, he’s easy with praise, lavishing Malcolm with compliments that border on something vaguely sexual.

He’s on his third set of pull-ups when Martin asks about murder. “His” murders. And Malcolm is honestly glad to have something to distract him from the nagging worry that Martin’s appreciation of his body might not be purely for the physical conditioning. 

Malcolm feeds his father the lie: he’d killed whenever he was on assignment, an anonymous opportunistic body left behind with each murderer he’d hunted down.

“Funny, that doesn’t sound like you, at all,” Martin says, his eyes narrowing shrewdly.

Malcolm’s heart leaps into his throat, and he fails for the first time to get his chin over the bar. He clears his mind and finishes the set before dropping down to the ground and dusting off his hands. “What do you mean?”

Martin stands and approaches him, and from the corner of his eye, Malcolm can see the guard brush a wrist against the taser on his belt and prepare to intervene. Martin seems to know precisely where he needs to stop to keep the guard calm, and he lowers his voice to a quiet whisper that doesn’t carry to say: “I understand the desire for anonymity when one’s father is a serial killer. It is, after all, why you’ve changed your name—and can you believe half the idiots in here haven’t put two and two together yet? But a tiger never does change its stripes, and the little boy I knew loved games far too much for the kills to be _random_.”

“They weren’t random,” Malcolm says, laying out the trail of breadcrumbs for Martin to follow.

“Then how did you choose them?” Martin asks, then abruptly looks him up and down. He skips the trail to go straight to the finish line, his voice dropping into a purr as he says, “Oh… Oh, my clever boy, you hid your murders among the men you were hunting didn’t you?”

His phrasing and tone seems to edge towards sexual again in a way that jangles Malcolm’s nerves, and maybe it’d been a mistake to let it slip to Martin back in college that he wasn’t straight. It could be that after so many years of hunting psychosexual killers, he’s just predisposed to thinking that way, despite the fact that he knows Martin’s profile better than anyone’s.

“You left them behind like a scatter of cuckoos eggs, which is why they only got you for two,” Martin is saying, coming to precisely the conclusion that Malcolm had intended. ”Of course, _of course_. You never were one for the limelight. That’s your sister, isn’t it? Quite the intrepid reporter she’s become. Well, sort of. Local news is a bit… ehhh.” Martin waggles his hand.

“Her career’s only just begun,” Malcolm says, coming quickly to Ainsley’s defense. Martin never really used to ask about her much, only dropping a token question here or there to keep up appearances. His interest in her now must solely be because she’s on television, and by extension, so is he. “Though she’d have a better chance at getting behind the desk if she hadn’t kept the name.”

Martin ignores the slight easily as it comes with the reminder that the Whitly name is still in the news somehow, and he arrows in again on what he perceives as Malcolm’s accomplishment. “A dozen cuckoos eggs laid across how many states? Well, no wonder your former employers have been able to keep it quiet. Still, I imagine they’ll be going over all your cases and digging up all sorts of secrets. I mean look at what they did to all my old patient records. It won’t be long before someone figures it out and sells a juicy story to the media.”

Patient records…. An idea starts to form in the back of Malcolm’s mind. He hadn’t considered that Martin’s consultations might extend beyond cardiothoracic surgery or that he’d want to share his insight into killing with anyone else other than his son.

“You don’t think I covered my tracks well enough?” Malcolm asks.

“My boy, none of us are perfect. Some killers are better at cleaning up their messes—or other people’s messes—but this new copycat of mine is sloppy.”

Malcolm jumps back up to the bar to hide the adrenaline rush at getting Martin to divulge that he’s been paying close attention to the copycat. He adjusts his grip with a quiet grunt. “What do you mean?”

“You know, it takes a certain kind of man to start at the Quartet and then jump straight to the first flower in the Bouquet. That speaks to a lack of purpose and a bit of overcompensation,” Martin says offhandedly, and Malcolm files that away to consider in its entirety later. “Oh, I’ve just had a fun thought: Netflix might want to make a documentary on you! Wouldn’t that be a treat?”

“I’m more interested in keeping my privacy,” Malcolm says. “I don’t need eyes on my work to know it’s important.”

“You know, you sound just like an old friend of mine when you say that.”

He finishes his set under Martin’s watchful eye with an acid bite eating at his insides.

Later that afternoon, Malcolm sits cross-legged on his bunk and writes down everything he can remember about his conversation with Martin. _A certain kind of man,_ Martin had said of his copycat. That has to be a nod to knowing precisely who it is that’s making an homage to his work. He also underlines the word ‘overcompensating’.

But then there’s the way Martin had juxtaposed _cleaning up their messes_ with the copycat. Malcolm doesn’t get the sense that Martin was referring to himself. He’s enough of a narcissist to have used ‘I’ and taken pride in his own tidiness, so then… what was he hinting at? Is there some other killer besides the copycat who Martin has a connection with? A second serial killer who’s managing to hide his victims? Who is Martin’s ‘old friend’?

When he’s done, Malcolm frowns as he reviews his notes. There are far more questions than answers on the pages in front of him, and that doesn’t bode well for his investigation.

* * *

That night, Malcolm straps himself into his restraints and, as he always does, prays for dreamlessness. He closes his eyes, listening to the hum of the fans pushing air through the facility, the mumble of sounds from the cell across from his, and eventually, he slides into sleep.

The dream that builds up around him starts subtly. They often do. He’s in a club, making his way through a crowd. All the faces around him are a blur, and he’s looking for something or someone. Hands reach for him, and he starts to realize he’s dreaming. If it’s a good night, he might even be able to take control of the narrative, and in a club like this, he’d be aiming to go home with someone.

Malcom turns around, trying to focus on the bodies pressing around him on the dancefloor, a mass of limbs gyrating and sweating. He grins as hands spread over his skin and looks down to find himself not naked, but nearly so: he’s wearing leather and cuffs, the sort of gear he’d put on for a very different sort of club.

He’s thinking this might not be such a bad dream after all when the crowd shifts, parts like the Red Sea, and leaves him staring down a hallway made of half-naked bodies. A figure is waiting for him: Martin dressed in flannel and denim with a heavy canvas bag in his hand.

Malcolm frowns and the giddy thrill of being nearly naked in a room full of strangers melts under the confusion. “What are you doing here?” he asks, unable to stop himself from walking forward. He tries to remind himself he’s dreaming. That none of this is real, not even the shiver of sick excitement that creeps across his skin as Martin smiles and skims his gaze down every inch of Malcolm’s body.

“Shh,” Martin says, holding a finger to his lips before he starts to unbutton the front of his shirt. “I got us a car.”

Malcolm spins on his heel and tries to run, but the crowd has filled in behind him, and all those hands spin him right around again and shove him towards Martin. He turns around again, but Martin catches him in a bear hug and smothers a hand over his mouth. There’s a sweet smell that briefly dizzies him.

“Mother doesn’t have to know,” his father says into his ear, and skids a hand down his front. Malcolm tries to scream when Martin’s hand cups his groin and thick fingers sink past his lips into his mouth.

The sound that rolls off his tongue is a moan, deep and damning.

“It’ll be our little secret.”

* * *

**_Day Three, Wednesday: individual therapy_ **

One-on-one therapy is held in a small office that’s clearly shared between a few different practitioners. There are at least five separate names on the glossy labels slowly peeling away from a tall metal filing cabinet with graffiti scratched into it. The therapist assigned to him seems overworked, and it takes her a few moments to find the right file. On the wall behind her hangs a neutral and somewhat abstract landscape painted in soft warm tones, and Malcolm waits patiently as she roots through the stack of files on her desk.

He smiles when she finally looks up at him with the correct paperwork in hand.

It only occurs to him after she’s carefully schooling her expression to get started that, to her, he has the smile of a killer.

Maybe it’s that which starts them off on the wrong foot. Although, it could just as easily be his general distrust of therapists. He refuses to see anyone other than Gabrielle for a reason—all those early lessons learned on what it meant to say the wrong thing to the wrong people and land the Whitly name in the papers again. Malcolm can still recall his mother’s discomfort souring the air. How he’d tried so desperately to find the right thing to say to fix her obvious exasperation and worry until, after a while, he’d found it easier to stop talking entirely. Which of course had led to more discomfort. More worry. More drinking. Being sat down in rooms not too dissimilar to this for hours upon hours with doctors who talked past him or wanted something he wasn’t ready to give… until Gabrielle, who had kept him company week after week, quiet and patient, not asking a thing and simply waiting for him to speak.

“Your file is a little incomplete. Do you know who did your assessment?”

The intake paperwork should’ve been a fairly accurate, if obfuscated version of his actual history. Explaining how he knows that, of course, won’t fly. Probably, she’s just disorganized enough to have lost it. He folds his hands in his lap. “I don’t. But I’m happy to answer any questions you have now.”

She fiddles with her pen. “Why don’t you begin by telling me a little bit about your parents?”

Only the Warden and Martin know Bright isn’t the name Malcolm was born with; to everyone else, he’s just another murderous sociopath with deep pockets. Still, the question makes his insides squirm and his fingers tremble. Especially in light of the dream that still feels so fresh in his mind. What did it mean? Was he remembering things?

“Well, my father was a classic narcissist, and my mother is an alcoholic. I have one sister, with whom I’m relatively close; however, she occasionally exhibits some narcissistic tendencies, herself.”

She writes something down. “Older or younger sister?”

“Younger.”

“Would you categorize your childhood experiences generally positive, negative, or something else?”

“Positive. Up until a certain age.”

More writing. Malcolm knows what it’s likely to say. Probably ‘traumatic event’ with a big question mark and a slew of little notes for likely adverse childhood experiences on top of parental substance abuse. 

“You were in law enforcement, I see, so I’m sure you know that I have to ask: do you have a history of sexual abuse?”

Bingo. Straight down the list. Malcolm winces inwardly. He keeps his face neutral, but there’s something about that dream that’s bothering him. ‘ _Our little secret_ ’, Martin had said yesterday, and he’d had a reaction to it that carried over into this night terrors. In his dream though, before Martin had repeated it and… _touched him_ … he’d said, _‘I bought a car’_.

Malcolm’s fairly certain his father never actually abused him sexually. In the dream, he was an adult, the same age he was in college when he’d started heavily experimenting and discovering that he had a predilection—unsurprisingly—for submissive acts and older men.

“As a victim or as a predator?” he asks, as mildly as possible. Ambiguity laced with a lack of remorse is the only way to answer that matches the profile he’s created for himself.

She hides her reaction well, but it does the trick and triggers unease. “Either,” she says.

He smiles, masking the queasy twist in his guts knowing that this is precisely the sort of charismatic appeal that Martin uses to keep people on their toes. “Well, not that I’m aware of, although with the current dialogue around consent culture, I could be wrong.”

The probing questions continue, and he answers them all with a mix of charm and ease and openness underpinned with apathy. Driving her towards the perfect diagnosis to land him in the same group as Martin but with none of the red flags that would cause strife between two very similar men. The worst part is, half of his answers are entirely the truth.

“We don’t have much time left, but this is a great start, Malcolm,” she says. “To finish up, is there anything else you’re willing to tell me about your parents?”

He’s about to shake his head when he stops himself and figures, why not? Maybe it’s skirting a little too close to the truth, but even sitting across from a man you think is a sociopath, no one wants to believe something so abhorrent as a successful, second-generation serial killer.

“My father was away a lot when I was a kid, and as it turned out, he had a whole secret life apart from ours. An entirely different second job, women other than my mother. Even so, losing him would be what I’d consider the major traumatic event in my history.”

There’s a part of Malcolm that thrills in making the confession. Knowing that the evidence is right in front of her and he’s doubled down, and she still can’t see it. The Surgeon has books written about him, documentaries, and there’s no question that she’d have seen at least some of them. Martin was the most famous serial killer in the news on the heels of Dahmer, and everyone loved to speculate about how much his wife and his son knew.

“My mother’s drinking, my sister’s attention seeking, my own deviant behaviors. Everything amplified after he left us.” Malcolm gestures towards her notes, and the chains cuffing him to the chair jangle. He glances down briefly, startled by his own failure to remember they were there. 

“That’s terrible,” the therapist says, and he can tell she’s filing it all away to note once he’s out of the room.

He’s judging her too harshly. What are the odds? Same age. Same first name. Ivy League school and a plea bargain on two murder charges that’s led to incarceration in the same facility? It would be insane for her to even consider it.

“It must have been very difficult to cope with,” she tells him. “Maybe it still is. Over the next week, why don’t you write down some thoughts about why you feel your father hid this other life from you and your family, and we can explore that next session. How does that sound?”

“I’ll think on it,” he says, and she pushes a small button near the phone bolted to the desk to have the guard come in to untether him from the chair.

* * *

After the evening meal, Malcolm revisits the conversation in his head by mapping out how she’d respond if he told her all the things he’s already considered regarding Martin’s motivations. He’s chased an endless variety of them through his head over the years, some of them reinforced over and over by the people closest to him: Martin liked the control, liked the power of holding onto that secret knowledge on top of a remarkable drive for self-preservation.

And then there’s that quiet whisper he stopped trying to get others to believe, but which he still holds in the lowest chambers of his heart: that Martin loved them— _loved him_ —and, by keeping his work separate from his family, he was keeping them safe.

It is, Malcolm knows, a lie, and one he probably holds onto in order to protect his own psyche. There are too many gaps in his memory for him to truly believe it, but it’s a nice fiction, and sometimes, in his dreams, it works to his advantage.

Sometimes, Martin doesn’t shout angrily at him when he fights the pull of the box in the basement. Sometimes, his father steps between him and the view of the girl’s pale body and folds him in a hug and tells him he doesn’t need to be scared. Promises him that Daddy’s here and Daddy’s going to protect him from everything.

Malcolm rubs absently at his hand and rereads the scatter of notes he’s made about the case. He has notes on three separate pages: one list of potential references to the copycat, a few notes about this possible second killer who might be an ‘old friend’ of Martin’s, and on the last, just the word ‘car?’ circled in red.

* * *

**_Day Four, Thursday: group therapy_ **

Martin clearly runs the room. He’s the only one to address the therapist in charge as Stanley and not Dr. Higa. Like the woman Malcolm has been assigned to for one-on-one sessions, Dr. Higa looks tremendously overworked and under-resourced. Possibly he’s given up and is simply resigned to babysitting to collect a paycheck.

“I thought we’d start today by looking inwards to the past. So many of us have been hurt by situations in our childhood, but even in the darkest times of our lives, there are moments of good to be found,” Dr. Higa says. “Maybe it’s something simple like a food you liked, a comic book you read, or a time you felt safe. Let’s go around the room and share a positive memory from childhood.”

“Malcolm, why don’t you start? You’re new,” Martin interjects. “I’m sure we’d all love to hear something positive about your childhood.”

“Just because he’s got the same name as your kid,” says the guy sitting beside Malcolm. Of course Martin would talk about him in group, and that means Malcolm is going to have to cherry-pick his statements that much more carefully.

Dr. Higa crosses one knee over the other and holds a hand towards Martin in invitation. “Why don’t you start, Martin, and give Malcolm a good example to follow.”

“Of course, I’m sure Malcolm will find me to be an excellent example,” Martin says, only taking his eyes off Malcolm briefly. “Well, when my brilliant little boy was six, we—”

“This should be your own childhood memory, Martin.”

“Yes, yes, I’m getting there. Allow me to set the scene first,” Martin insists. “As I was saying, when my boy—when _my_ Malcolm was six—I took him to a conservatory. Oh, he loved it, stared up in wonder all big-eyed and amazed. He could watch those birds flitting around all day. Daddy, he’d say, tell me their names. And I had to make them up, you see, because I really didn’t know. Never was a big birder.”

Malcolm stares at the floor approximately a foot in front of him. The guy next to him—Hector?—gives him a little commiserating nudge with his knee.

“I had a very similar experience as a boy,” Martin goes on, and Malcolm catches in his peripheral the way his father gestures to himself as if to reinforce that he was playing by the rules. “My father would often take me to the zoo to see the animals. I always found it very calming watching them in their little environments.”

There’s silence as everyone in the room waits for him to continue.

“Oh, that’s it. A lovely time at the zoo,” Martin says, smiling.

“Thank you for going first,” Dr. Higa says. “Let’s go counter-clockwise shall we? Hector, how about you….”

As Hector shares a rather bland moment related to toys, Malcolm considers if he ought to lie. He could steal a moment from Ainsley, but Martin might realize and the less information he gives their father about her, the better. If he chooses a memory related to Gil and Martin recognizes it, that would undo any progress he’s made getting into Martin’s good graces, or at the very least, introduce a completely unpredictable element of anger. Better maybe to go into his earlier memories and be honest, but vague.

When Dr. Higa gestures for him to begin, Malcolm leans forward, arms draped on his thighs. He purposely avoids looking at Martin. “Well, when I was a little boy, my father was gone a lot for work. I was a bit of an odd kid—never had many friends—but my dad, he… well, I was always so happy to see him when he came home. That feeling of hearing the front door open and knowing he was back….” Malcolm closes his eyes, shutting out the way that Martin hangs on his every word in the present.

Even after all this time, he can still summon up the feeling of that anticipatory swell of _daddy’s home_ and the joy of rushing over to meet him. Of being swept up into a swinging hug. “Things changed, but I’ll never forget that feeling.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Martin says, breathless. “Everyone, don’t you agree? We’re so lucky to have Malcolm here with us, aren’t we?”

He starts applauding, and Hector gives Malcolm another commiserating look. At least now, Malcolm knows who it is his father has latched onto as a surrogate.

There’s another round of sharing, this time on things members of the group are grateful for. Martin surprisingly chooses to say ‘books and literature’ and not ‘my son’, and when it’s Malcolm’s turn, he offers up ‘being able to learn from mentors’. In his mind, he’s thinking about how often Gil has been there for him over the years, ready to catch him and steer him back onto the right path whenever things got dicey, but he knows Martin is convinced Malcolm means him.

Malcolm measures the glances Martin casts his way during the rest of the session. The next time they can talk together, tomorrow at mealtime maybe, he’ll be able to push his father into divulging more of what he knows about his copycat.

* * *

The guard who comes to escort him and the others from his wing back to their cells is a new face: his contact, Chavez. He secures Malcolm into his cell last, lingering long enough for Malcolm to slip him a sheaf of notes and quickly relay that he’ll need a few more days but that he’s making good progress. He also tells the guy that his father definitely knows the perpetrator, so Gil and the team need to find out who Martin has consulted for in the past twenty years.

He considers telling Chavez his suspicions that there might be a second serial killer connected to Martin out there operating right now, but there’s nothing the team can do on such a vague hunch so Malcolm holds that back. The idea sits in his stomach like lead—weighted and cold—and the more time he spends with it, the more he’s certain it’s true.

How many more people have died because he’d walked away ten years ago and never came back? Once he’d joined the Bureau, he could’ve made it a point to keep interviewing Martin. But if he had, would he have risked ending up here for real?

* * *

He dreams that night of the sound of birds. He’s holding one in his hands, wings struggling and trapped in the cage of his fingers. He’s trying to protect it. Trying with all his might to keep something so very fragile safe while all around him, broken-winged bodies plummet.

He starts running, leaves scattering under his feet, branches tearing at his clothes. There’s something behind him chasing him, and no matter how fast he runs, he can’t escape the heavy tread of boots thumping after him. There’s a flash of red at the corner of his eye, and then he’s scooped up and cradled in gentle arms that swing him around and leave him dizzy, his head spinning like he’s been drugged.

“Where are you off to?” Martin asks, setting him down not back into the soft leaves of a forest floor, but onto unforgiving concrete.

There are bars a few feet in front of him—he’s on the wrong side of the line!—but the walls are the slate grey of the basement. This is all wrong. He’s dreaming. And there’s nothing he can do to escape Martin’s breath warm against his skin.

Soft lips skate across the nape of his neck, and Malcolm knows with rising panic that if he looks down, the box will be there with them in this basement cell. He needs to wake up.

“My boy, what did you do with your knife? You didn’t leave it in the car, did you? You never know when it’ll come in handy.”

At that, Malcolm knows that he has no choice; he needs to look. Needs to be sure it’s not the weight of a knife nestled against his palm. It isn’t supposed to be. He’s been holding something important that he needs to keep away from Martin, but when he looks, his hands are empty and his palms are wet and red.

Martin tongues a kiss at his neck before squeezing him closer, the hug becoming swiftly too-tight, constricting around him like a snake crushing its prey. There’s the pop of hollow bones snapping too easily—his bones—and a breath in his ear like a feather that whispers, _Welcome home, my boy,_ before he’s left discarded and broken beside the box in the basement.


	3. I’ll take a hit of whatever you’ve got

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: Malcolm under sedatives, dreamscape fuckery, mentions of self-destructive behavior, and attempted sexual assault.

**_Day Five, Friday: sedation_**  
Malcolm is so exhausted from a night spent running from his fears that he doesn’t do as diligent a check of his medication when the nurse slides them through the slot. Eyes heavy and burning, he tosses the pills back like a shot and crumples the tiny paper cup in his fist as he chokes them down with water from the sink.

It isn’t until he’s halfway through his yoga routine that he realizes something is wrong. His muscles aren’t responding properly, and his thoughts keep drifting. He’d thought it was a meditative calm at first, but the moment his limbs stop feeling like his own, he knows he’s dissociating.

Logically, he knows this isn’t good. There’s a yawning emptiness where his unease should be. His fear isn’t always rational or even manageable, but PTSD aside, it’s meant to keep him safe. There’s nothing rising up to meet what his brain knows will be bad for him, and even considering potential causes for his current state becomes more difficult. More distant.

Malcolm picks himself up off the floor and carefully thinks out the steps he needs to take before this worsens. He proceeds with step one: bang on the door of his cell until the guard responds and try to explain that there must’ve been a mixup with his pills.

The nurse is summoned, and Malcolm walks him through the problem and listens as the guy explains that the physician on staff overnight felt his night terrors were increasing and a mild sedative might help.

He can’t explain why the calm he’s experiencing is a problem. They never understand. It’s not that everything is moving so slowly that it doesn’t feel right. It’s not even that he dislikes everything being so even-tempered and serene.

It’s that soon the tiredness will mean he’ll lay himself down, and the sleep that awaits him won’t even have a chance at being dreamless. He’ll be trapped in his own head with any number of monsters, and he won’t even try to run.

“I’ll pay not to feel like this,” Malcolm says as the nurse helps him back to his cot. He can’t tell whether or not his words are persuasive. “Please. Name your price. I have money. Whitly money. I need to be able to wake up.”

He tries to say more, but he can’t quite figure out why it’s so important. He’s in bed so securing his cuffs is what he needs to do. Someone helps him with that as his head sinks against the pillow. He falls into it then keeps falling.

Broken-winged.

Hollow-boned.

He’s not sure how many hours he’s been asleep when he recognizes his dreams for what they are, but he knows the weight of a knife in his hand and the wet slip of blood between his fingers. He knows this isn’t the first time tonight he’s dreamed about pushing a blade into someone’s flesh. But it’s the first time he’s felt anything resembling remorse as he’s done it.

He’s staring up at a bearded figure whose face remains in shadow. It’s someone tall like his father, imposing in build and towering over him. Looming and dangerous. Is this faceless menace meant to be a representation of Martin? Only… he’s clearly not infallible as Martin often is in his dreams. This man is cursing and bleeding from the wound Malcolm has punched into his side. 

“I—” Malcolm tries to say he’s sorry, but he isn’t sorry at all. That’s an echo of terror and anger simmering under his skin. The man turns tail and runs. Curious.

Malcolm’s knuckles tighten around the handle of his knife. He could pursue. He could finish it.

“You should’ve. Made a real mess that night, didn’t you, son. But… what did I tell you? You never know when a good knife will come in handy. And here’s the proof.”

He turns and finds Martin at his side, calmly observing, one hand slung casually in his pants pocket, the other fingering something golden and delicate. A bracelet maybe. Malcolm frowns and tries to focus on it, but as he does the whole foundation of his dream shakes, his vision warping and mind rebelling, like he’s trying to force two magnets with opposite polarity together.

Is it his mother’s jewelry? He’d know that, wouldn’t he? Unless there’s something he doesn’t want to remember about her…. A flash of his mother’s laughter rings through the dream, too fleeting to hold onto. _My loves…._

Malcolm grits his teeth and wrests the dreamscape back under control, letting it settle into the moment before it risked collapse. Back to when the man had fled, where he’d been inside but not at home. He can’t summon up any additional details of that anymore than he could focus on the necklace. But, Martin… Martin is so crisp and richly detailed that Malcolm can practically smell him.

“What did you make me do?” he asks, voice even. Usually, when he faces Martin in his nightmares he’s screaming or crying and not… in control like this.

The power that comes with the realization cuts through the numbness like a scalpel.

“No,” Malcolm says, finger shaking dismissively towards Martin’s form as he rounds on him. “Don’t answer. You’re not really him. You’re just a composite of memory and my own psyche.”

“Oh, my boy. I’m so much more.”

“In a way, you’re right,” Malcolm agrees. He raises the knife and aims it at the center of Martin’s chest. His hand is remarkably steady, his nerves not jangling like cans on a string and screaming for him to run. Maybe this is what he’s needed all along. Not to flee but to hold his ground. “Because if you’re a part of me, you’re just as broken.”

Malcolm’s gaze lifts to meet his father’s, and Martin smiles beatifically. When Malcolm doesn’t lower the knife, Martin’s smile crumples briefly, a flicker of nervousness crossing his face like a shadow of a passing bird before he places his hand over Malcolm’s.

And then it’s not Martin at all holding Malcolm’s hand on the knife, but his mirror image. A reflection of himself, who pulls the blade in to pierce its own heart. As it sinks in—as he pushes it in—Malcolm feels it, the pain bringing the edge of fear back into him.

“Shall we dance?” his doppelganger asks him, blood pouring from its lips to stain its clothes red. It pulls him into an embrace, twists around him, cashmere soft at his back and a hand over his mouth.

Something sweet fills his nose, and the world around them spins and swirls, dreamscape realigning until Malcolm finds himself dumped in the middle of a club moving through a sea of bodies. Everyone is eager to touch him. He’s dreamed this before.

Only this time, he can clearly pick out the parts that are based on memory and reality. He remembers this place, and he’s not dressed for a leather bar or a dungeon, he’s wearing what he’d worn to class that day: v-neck over a button-down, A&F jeans riding low.

He’d been down in New York the week before to visit with Gil and Jackie, to have dinner with his mother and Ainsley, and then, before returning to Boston, the real reason he’d come down: a visit to Claremont to see Martin.

This is the first time he’d gone to a club after their chat on anger-retaliatory lust killers. Martin had made an off-hand comment about good looks or charm helping predators of that sort entice their sexual partners-cum-victims and just how easy it must be for Malcolm to score with women, and he’d responded by questioning the assumption that he was even interested in women, or solely in women, anyway. He can recall Martin’s quick frown, the one where, at the time, he’d thought Martin was disappointed in him and not the truth: that Martin was wrestling with the reality that maybe they weren’t so alike after all, he and Malcolm.

But at the time, all he’d felt was hurt, and he’d returned to Boston raw and needy. He’d come to this club on an eighteen and over night looking to go home with someone that would make him feel good and forget that sting of rejection, but just like the faces around him now, everyone had seemed so juvenile.

He hadn’t expected to run into one of his professors here—some of the TAs sure, but definitely not Professor Waller with his tidy beard, lingering near the back of the bar. He’d gone over to him, out of curiosity, and ended up talking shop. Had gone home with him and felt _charmed_ at being served a neat drink in a quiet study in Beacon Hill and discussing murder with someone other than his father. Knew he’d been equally on the prowl when Waller kissed him and pushed him to the couch and opened his pants. Gasped and moaned when he’d gotten fucked with barely enough spit to get by and had panicked when Waller shot his load, smothered his weight across Malcolm’s back, and confessed that he knew who Malcolm really was. Still, despite the tremor in his hand and the shortness of his breath, he hadn’t resisted when Waller turned him over and kissed him again before going down on him.

He’d only slid his shaking hand into greying curls and pictured Martin’s mouth closing eagerly around him.

But that had been just over ten years ago. And he hasn’t met anyone here, yet.

Malcolm tries to stay out amongst the crowd, in the writhing press of bodies, but just like his dreams in the basement, he can’t control everything, and eventually the dream itself pushes him towards the back of the bar.

It’s not Waller standing there nursing a drink. It’s Martin, chatting animatedly with someone his own age. He taps a brightly colored toothpick against the edge of the glass in his hand before sucking it clean. The young man he’s with leans closer in invitation, body language begging for attention, eyes gleaming and hands finding every excuse to touch. He’s ready and eager to get fucked, and Martin is about to put a hand on his shoulder and suggest they go back to his place.

Malcolm feels a surge of jealousy before he wakes, hard and aching.  


* * *

**_Day Six, Saturday: arts and crafts_ **

Saturday morning, the nurse gives him five pills and lingers to watch him swallow them. Malcolm hands one back in the cup.

“A thousand a month,” he says, relieved when the man palms the leftover pill and nods.

His sleep was, once again, if not peaceful, shockingly restful. He feels strangely clear, even before beginning his morning yoga practice.

It’s been years since he thought about Professor Waller, and for the first time, there’s no stinging shame along with the memory. He’d been stupid, yes, but he’d also been nineteen, a prime age for stupid, as Gil would say. It was just the first time someone had so openly wanted to starfuck him or his father, by proxy—Malcolm’s never quite sure what Waller’s angle had been. His own angle, well, he’d gone back to the man three times before realizing that Beacon Hill house wasn’t a bachelor pad and that Waller wasn’t the only man over forty who wanted a piece of him.

* * *

Despite the awkwardness of waking up aroused by a direct line tapping into his daddy issues, Malcolm had been hoping to have time to talk to Martin at the mid-day meal, but their schedules don’t quite align, and they only manage to lock eyes from across the room as Martin is escorted in and Malcolm, out.

Maybe it’s better that way because Malcolm’s dreams have been clinging to him more and more, and with the way Martin has been acting towards him, it might be difficult to temper his reactions. It’s so hard to focus on himself when he’s around Martin. Not just because of the case and the urgency behind the need to gain his father’s trust, but because he’s always had a difficult time not falling into the trap of wishing everything could magically go back to the way it was.

He knows Martin’s a killer. That knowledge lives at the very core of why he became a profiler: to stop others from ruining as many lives in the same way. But he can't stop the way he feels when Martin looks at him, that hopeful glee like hearing Martin’s key in the lock as a child. And even now that Martin’s attention seems to carry a dark, sexual undercurrent, part of him, maybe just as sick, craves it. Isn’t that what his dream had been trying to remind him of?

He’s taken directly from the cafeteria to the craft room, which is about as well-stocked as the exercise ‘yard’. Malcolm finds himself being set up with an adult coloring book and more of the same short pencils he has in his cell. He studies the other inmates here with him for a while, but eventually flips open the book and starts a page full of spiraling flowers, reminded of the time his _real_ therapist had suggested he try this sort of thing as a meditative practice. Mostly, he’d gotten bored coloring. Today though, he falls into a rhythm, the soft scritch-scratch of the pencil soothing.

It’s frightening how easy it is to settle into the routine of this place. It hasn’t even been a full week, and waiting has ceased to be tedious. Instead, the time in his cell and the march between the half-dozen rooms that have become his world is oddly calming.

Maybe it’s because there are no obligations here in Claremont. And where outside he might be wrangling with the terror of what could happen if he entertains those dark thoughts that creep in when he isn’t busy with work—thoughts like plunging a blade into a man or having incestuous thoughts about his father—inside here is where those thoughts belong. Away from the public. From innocents.

But even as he fills in another flower on the page he can’t escape the ever-present knowledge that a countdown continues toward another body. The killer is trying to complete the Bouquet—three intricate murders that, in Martin’s past, had been intertwined, but for which the copycat might take a radically different approach and only go for style, not substance. All he needs is a little more time with Martin, another day or two after yesterday’s frustrating setback.

He colors more flowers in, pressing harder and harder each time until the only pencil still carrying a point is red.

Malcolm rolls the pencil between his fingers, hesitant to put blood on the page. Briefly he closes his eyes, remembers Martin sitting across from him with his wrists cuffed to the table and answering questions. The way he’d licked his lips when Malcolm had asked how Martin would kill him.

Malcolm had held a sharper pencil in his hands then, and he’d pictured killing Martin with it in turn. He can recall so vividly the ways he’d pictured using it as a weapon, from the give of Martin’s eye like a grape before it plunged into his frontal lobe to the force of driving it into his ear, how the carotid would be risky and not his first choice, but if he could follow it up with a second stab to puncture something vital….

But there’s something else. He tips his head as he summons up what he can from the memory. There’s something about the way Martin had looked at him all throughout the visit, the way he’d dart his eyes at the guard during questions that skewed towards sexual deviancy, and then—

Malcolm clenches his jaw, feeling stupid that he hadn’t seen it at the time. His father’s first thought hadn’t been about killing him, at all. He’d been just as blind as he’d been as a child. The end of the pencil digs into his thumb, and he swallows thickly. If he could stomach alternate ways of getting Martin to confide in him, he might be able to make up for lost time.

Slowly, Malcolm begins to fill in the red.

* * *

**_Day Seven, Sunday: the showers_ **

Every other day of the week, shower time has gone by in the blink of an eye. It’s hardly enough time to shave with the cheap safety razors they’re allowed, and by day four, Malcolm had given up trying to avoid nicks on his throat in favor of a bit more time to wash his hair.

Sunday, he’s slotted for extra grooming time. A few years ago, this would land him in a barber’s chair for a trim or a shape up, but nowadays that’s a luxury afforded to Claremont patients only once a month. Now it means an additional twenty minutes to enjoy the steamy embrace of the shower room.

There are three other men—including Martin—already in the showers when he’s escorted in. His exemplary behavior means he no longer needs a guard inside the room to supervise, and he clutches his kit tightly as the door swings shut behind him. For all that he’s embraced the routine, the sound of the lock engaging sends a jolt up his spine.

One of the three patients in here is Anderson, a man Malcolm had clocked on the first day as someone to be avoided. The more Malcolm has seen of him, the more he recognizes the signs of covetous sociopathy coupled with a touch of sadism. Precisely the sort of attention that Malcolm needs to steer clear of.

He sets his things down on the small shelf beside the fixture furthest away from Anderson. It also happens to put him next to his father, who is busy lathering shampoo into his hair and humming a jaunty little tune quietly under his breath.

Already feeling awkward, Malcolm tries not to look as he disrobes and turns the spigot. Water spits out in a stinging spray, the temperature going quickly to warm and stopping there.

At the sound of the water hissing on, Martin’s eyes blink open. Malcolm’s skin tightens as his father’s gaze begins not by catching his but instead at his feet. Martin’s attention travels leisurely up Malcolm’s body, with several significant detours. “Oh, Malcolm,” he says with something approaching a smirk when their eyes finally catch, “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Hello, Martin.”

“Working on a beard are you?” Martin remarks, gesturing towards the point of his own chin. The ”just like dear old dad” remains unspoken but ringing in the air. He reaches out as if he wants to cradle Malcolm’s cheek, but Malcolm shies away. Martin lowers his arm somewhat reluctantly, but the heat in his eyes remains. Has Martin guessed some of the reasons Malcolm had to stop seeing him ten years ago? How often the visits turned him towards increasingly risky sex afterwards and then party drugs to keep it going until Gil had to sit him down and tell him he’d never make it into law enforcement if he kept on like he was?

“Not really the look I’m going for,” Malcolm says more brusquely than he means to. He grabs his soap and the little plastic safety razor from the shelf. Usually, he prefers roughly one-week of growth shading his jaw, but without the ability to trim it down, the hairs are starting to curl and look scraggly. Another week and maybe it’d be presentable, but the face looking back at him in the mirror every day is already starting to feel less and less like a reflection of himself.

There’s a strip of acrylic mirror running along the wall below the shower heads, the surface scratched and distorted. Malcolm doesn’t need a clear reflection to just shave everything off, though, and even under Martin’s watchful eye, his hand doesn’t shake terribly. He makes quick work of the task, flicking soap off the razor as he inspects his face as best he can in the wavering reflection. 

It feels odd to be fully clean-shaven. It makes him look several years younger, as if he’s fresh out of college.

“Smooth as a baby’s bottom,” Martin comments. He tips his head back under the spray to rinse his hair clean. “Although, by the looks of it, your bottom is still remarkably smooth.”

He speaks loudly enough to draw glances. Pushing away the worry that Martin might have intuited his own vaguely incestuous thoughts, various statistics run through Malcolm’s head about sexual violence in prison. Malcolm stares at the slim bar of soap in his hand and swallows thickly. 

He’s still wrestling with the worry that Martin might somehow be able to see it on his skin—the evidence that he hasn’t had a chance yet to wash away from last night, when he’d woken up from another dream of Professor Waller-turned-Martin with a yearning that wouldn’t leave him until he’d desperately jerked it staring at his own haunted reflection.

A shadow falls across him, and he startles.

“Hey, kid,” Anderson says. He looks Malcolm straight in the eye as a show of dominance. “I ran out of shampoo, and James there’s out. You got some?”

Martin twists towards Malcolm and whispers, “Better be careful, Malcolm. He doesn’t play well with others,” out the side of his mouth.

“You say something, Whitly?”

“Just encouraging Malcolm here to demonstrate good judgment when faced with a request from someone like yourself,” Martin says, swiveling back to smile winningly at Anderson.

There’s no good way to manage the situation. Anderson doesn’t really want the shampoo, he wants to take it. Which means, if Malcolm doesn’t hand it over, Anderson will be angry, and if he does hand it over, Anderson will ask for something else. Maybe though, that request will come some time in the future, and a bit of deference now will stroke the man’s ego.

“Sure, here,” Malcolm says, holding it out. “Use whatever you want.”

Anderson reaches out to take it, then grabs Malcolm’s wrist instead at the last second. His grip is iron as Malcolm instinctively tries to pull away. The small bottle falls to the floor and rolls across the tile towards Martin.

“What if I want to use _you_?” Anderson says.

Malcolm’s nostrils flare, and he clenches his jaw. He could take this asshole down without breaking a sweat. The guy is strong, clearly, but his balance is off; a crouch and a twist and he could break the hold and kick Anderson’s legs out from under him. It would definitely earn him some points with Martin, who can hardly contain the bloodthirsty gleam in his eye, but at what risk? The other two inmates in the room aren’t friends of Anderson’s, but they’re not avoiding the situation, they’re _interested_ —piqued by the smell of blood in the water. If he incapacitates Anderson and the guards consider him the instigator, he could lose the privileges he’s earned or even end up in solitary, and if the Warden were to intervene after the fact, Martin would easily know something is up.

Left with no choice, Malcolm goes for the only other tactic that comes to mind. “Well, I’ve always enjoyed taking it in the mouth,” he says, letting his gaze turn hungry. He reaches out to touch his palm low on Anderson’s belly, skidding it down towards the guy’s soft cock. 

He manages to tense his muscles the second before Anderson’s fist hits him right in the gut. It doesn’t drive the wind out of him, but he doubles over, and when Anderson yanks at his arm, Malcolm moves with the motion. His feet slip a bit on the tile, but not enough that he loses control. He throws a look past the guy’s bulk to Martin, who holds his hands up in the universal signal for _not my problem_.

“So, I guess your question wasn’t indicative of situational homosexual behavior on your part,” Malcolm blurts out. He straightens a bit and centers his balance again. “You’re what, just looking for an opportunity to show me who’s boss?”

“That’s right, bitch,” Anderson says, yanking Malcolm’s arm again before releasing his hold to follow up with a haymaker.

Malcolm ducks right under it easily and shoves Anderson back. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you,” Malcolm says, retreating a step and spreading his weight out a little more evenly between his feet. “Guard!”

James, a stocky guy an inch or so taller than him exhibits clear signs of agitation, drawing closer in Malcolm’s peripheral, his hands flexing like he’s aching to jump into the fight.

Malcolm dodges his swing when it comes and ends up opening himself up to a low punch that glances off his elbow to hit his ribs. The guy’s a better fighter than Anderson, sharper and smarter, and two-on-one is good enough odds on solid ground, but with the floor wet beneath his feet….

He goes down on the next hit, hoping that such a submissive move will placate Anderson. It doesn’t. The guy’s foot comes down on his hip, trying to shove him onto his back. He curls into a protective ball, arms cradled over his face, knees up and tight as blows rain down on him. Someone fists a handful of his hair, and then there’s a grip on his ankle, trying to pull his leg out. Another hand on his other ankle and the panic spikes. This got ugly and fast. Malcolm calls out again and kicks, wild-eyed and frantic. 

He hits Anderson in the nuts, and as the guy staggers back, Malcolm manages to scrabble away, finding himself running into something solid. Martin’s leg, he realizes, as his father reaches a hand down to help him up.

“Now, boys, that’s enough horseplay for today,” Martin says, his voice dark with warning.

Malcolm though is running on adrenaline now instead of strategy, and when Anderson’s buddy takes a half step to feint him, Malcolm whips a hand out and bloodies his nose. He gets a jab to the cheek in retribution, tasting copper in his mouth, and Malcolm spits red to the floor.

“Malcolm, stop,” Martin barks, intervening finally and stepping forward to intercept James’s advance. Martin’s taller and bulkier than the guy and he shoves him right back into Anderson before catching hold of Malcolm and drawing him back, looping an arm over his chest and pulling Malcolm tight against him. “Hush now,” he says into Malcolm’s ear.

Malcolm struggles, but Martin’s arm around him holds firm. Through the rush of blood in his skull, he hears the door push open.

“These two were fighting,” Martin says, waving between Anderson and James with his free arm. “I had to stop little Malcolm here from trying to break them apart. I didn’t want such a fresh face to get hurt during his first week.”

The guard has his club in hand and doesn’t look convinced. “That true?” he asks, looking not at them but at the one inmate who had plastered himself against the wall furthest away.

“Go on, tell the man,” Martin says, turning towards the cowering figure. “Speak up.”

“It’s true! It’s all true. Anderson started it, and James here was defending himself. The pretty boy tried to stop them.”

A second guard—his fellow agent, Chavez—comes running. His taser is out and ready to fire.

“Martin, let me go,” Malcolm says, holding his hands out to indicate the situation is calm as he briefly makes eye contact with the other undercover agent. He’s also suddenly keenly aware of just how tightly pressed he is to Martin and the soft but unmistakable nudge of his father’s cock right at his ass. “Please.”

“Of course, my boy,” Martin says, releasing him with obvious—at least, obviously to Malcolm—reluctance.

“Thank you,” Malcolm says and flinches when as he steps away Martin follows up with a little pat to his butt and a blameless smile.

“Keep your fucking hands to yourself, Whitly,” Chavez says. “I’ll keep watch on these three, you take those fools to their cells and report the incident.”

Anderson and James are led away and under Chavez’s watchful eye, Malcolm rinses off quickly, ready to be out of here. The bite on the inside of his cheek stings and so does the sick thrill when, every so often, he can feel the ghost of Martin’s body pressed up against him.

Martin, though, doesn’t look his way—or at the other inmate, clearly his father’s lackey—for the remainder of their time, playing so carefully by the rules that Malcolm is left wondering just how easy it is for him to break them when he needs.

When Martin’s usual escort comes to fetch him and the other inmate, Chavez turns to him but doesn’t immediately move to leave, and Malcolm can feel Martin’s curiosity burning as his father’s led away. Martin glances back over his shoulder, fixated and questioning, and Malcolm winces inwardly, knowing he’s got to bank on his looks again on playing to weakness. He turns his glance down, shying away from the look on Chavez’s face that, from his angle, is concern and from Martin’s, could be anything.

“Don’t touch me,” Malcolm says, just loud enough for Martin to hear.

Chavez catches on and takes him by the elbow, driving him out of Martin’s sightline before releasing him to hiss, “That fucker had his hands all over you, you okay?”

“Well, my therapist doesn’t think so, but I’m fine. Any updates?”

“Nothing good. Second body in the Bouquet surfaced in Chelsea,” Chavez says, giving him a few brief details.

Malcolm curses under his breath. “I need some time alone with Martin. Can you pull some strings and get us in— I don’t know, a special art therapy session or something?”

“You don’t think that’ll raise some suspicions?”

“It will, but I just lost two days to circumstance, and unless I’m able to get something out of Martin later today at mealtime, we’re running out of options.”


	4. all I see are tomorrows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who very patiently waited for this chapter as I was distracted by the Trash swap and other projects! I hope this will be worth the wait. FYI: I've fixed a lot of typos and made minor edits in prior chapters (with the help of TheCosmicMushroom) and in the process discovered that a chunk of Chapter One had at some point gone missing, so if you missed Malcolm's first day in Claremont, I've gone back and fixed that!

**_Day Eight, Monday: alone time_ **

Immediately after the nurse does rounds, Malcolm’s morning routine is interrupted by a guard unlocking his cell. An orderly waits outside, not entering until Malcolm takes up position against the wall. Obediently, Malcolm plants his feet in the spot he’s been instructed to stand whenever someone enters his cell.

His pulse kicks up at the sudden change. “What’s going on?” he asks. Maybe Chavez had been able to push through the request for some alone time with Martin. Or maybe it's to do with his medication, he considers as the orderly picks up Malcolm’s pillow and shakes it from its case. Did they know he passed the sedative back? Or do they suspect he has some sort of contraband?

“You’re being transferred,” the orderly tells him. He begins filling the pillowcase with Malcolm’s personal belongings with little regard for the items themselves.

“Transferred? What do you mean?”

The guy shrugs to signal that he both doesn’t care and it’s well above his pay grade. Malcolm flexes his hand as the tremor kicks up. _Transferred to where?_

“What about my restraints?”

The look the guy gives him clearly says he thinks Malcolm is a freak, but he unhooks them from the frame of the cot and shoves them in the makeshift bag, too.

A sinking sensation turns his stomach into lead and leaves his breath shallow as he’s escorted out of this wing to the other side of the facility. He’s walked past cell after cell, down familiar corridors that cease branching until there’s only one possible outcome awaiting him.

Each step is a trudge through ankle-deep sand—he’s living his nightmares, struggling against the pull of the box in his dreams. There’s no way Gil approved moving him into the block housing Martin. And after yesterday, he doubts the bureau liaison would, either. Malcolm already knew the Warden could be bought, but this is a whole other level of corruption.

His heart thunders in his ears as one of his worst fears looms in front of him: the door to his father’s cell— _his cell_. They’re going to put them in there with Martin. They’re going to put him in and lock the door, and he’ll never be free. 

The door yawns open, and it takes the guard prodding him with a nightstick to get his feet to move him across the threshold.

Martin’s cell is empty, thankfully, and Malcolm struggles to overcome the rush of cold panic and focus on the details he can observe.

Claremont might be in worse shape overall, but Martin’s cell is much nicer than it was ten years ago. It’s clearly been recently renovated to house two inmates, but Martin’s consulting seems to have bought him a great deal of perks over the last ten years: Bookshelves full of his father’s journals and aging volumes on all subjects straddle the visitor safety line and face each other across the room, mirrored like the simple sleeping cots. One set has clearly been moved to make space for Martin’s bunk; Malcolm can see the outlines of the shelf still present on the left wall where moisture has buckled the paint atop the plaster. Affixed firmly on either side of a toilet on the wall opposite the door, there are two brand new bolts—a tether for him, and one for his father.

Cataloging the room helps calm his nerves, and Malcolm feels less lightheaded as he sets his things down on the floor beside the bare bunk stacked with linens. He makes the bed, and by the time he’s begun sorting through his scatter of belongings, they’re bringing his father back in. He turns to watch and sees his guard share a look with Martin as his father is released into the cell. Martin goes obediently to stand against the wall as required, and when Malcolm takes up a similar post, the two guards file out without a word.

Malcolm flinches as the door is closed and locked, and he can’t stop the shaking in his hand or the panic rising up in his chest as he’s left truly alone with the Surgeon for the first time in twenty years. He fights to keep his breathing slow and even, reminding himself over and over that people out there will die if he doesn’t do this.

Perhaps because of the tremor in Malcolm’s hand, or perhaps because he’s simply savoring the moment, Martin doesn’t immediately cross or close the distance between them. He laces his fingers together loosely in front of him and smiles beatifically at Malcolm—admiring his son’s return to this familiar space. 

Slowly, Malcolm manages to shove aside the voice in his head screaming for him to run and pound against the door and scream for them to call Gil. To get him out, _now_. He stretches his fingers wide and scrapes his teeth over his lip as he surveys Martin.

“A last minute transfer. Did you have something to do with that?” he asks, struggling to keep his voice even.

“Couldn’t have my boy rotting away in a standard five-by-ten, could I?” Martin says. He gestures at the space around them and its amenities. “Not when a _much_ nicer bunk so conveniently opened up.”

The blood drains out of Malcolm, and his guts go cold; he hadn’t anticipated someone dying to get him this level of access. He rubs at his hand to try and stop the tremor before it starts up again and draws in a slow, even breath. Maybe Gil was right, maybe he could’ve gotten answers out of Martin without subjecting himself to this.

Martin clearly notices the change in his demeanor. “Don’t be morbid, Malcolm,” he says, settling into his chair and leaning back with deliberate casualness. ”It was a direct and equitable exchange. A private cell for my good friend Hector and a far more comfortable one for my boy.

“I won’t say it was cheap, but what else am I going to spend my money on?”

“What money is that, exactly?” Malcolm asks. His mother had a prenup—no Milton would ever have married without one—and while a decorated surgeon brought in a hefty income, all of Martin’s money had gone to settlements and lawyer’s fees. Beyond buying him perks and privileges, are Martin’s benefactors keeping accounts for him, too?

“Everyone needs a rainy day fund, Malcolm. Even serial killers.”

“You must enjoy consulting for patients with very deep pockets,” Malcolm says, hoping Martin might choose to divulge something. “Pity no one’s going to come knocking for my expertise in this place.”

“Well, don’t be glum and think your mother’s given up on you. I’m sure when the story breaks, no matter what the press says, she’ll find a way to blame me for this. But yes!” Martin crows, turning the conversation back to his accomplishments, “I do consult for some _verrrry_ noteworthy people. It helps to have friends in high places, you know. They’re not always as reliable as the friends I’ve made in low places, but murderers can’t be choosers….”

The anxiety tightening Malcolm’s chest eases as his mind fixes on the possible leads Martin throws out left and right.

“What makes your friends in high places less reliable?” he asks, slowly beginning to go through his things again and making careful plans for how to destroy his notes before Martin has a chance to find them.

“Oh, I was speaking in general terms. You know how it is,” Martin says. “Blood is one thing, but the wealthy are always looking out for themselves first. Quick to abandon ship at the first sign of trouble. Now, a good blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth man? He’ll follow you to the end of days, if you treat him right. In fact, I doubt your Lieutenant Arroyo will believe you belong in here any more than your mother will.”

Malcolm hides a frown. _Your Lieutenant Arroyo_.... Interesting choice of words considering that Malcolm had never really talked much about Gil’s role in his life after Martin’s arrest. How closely has Martin paid attention to him and his career, exactly? With the resources that had gotten him from a cage to enjoying a writing desk and an entire library in his private cell, it’s possible he’s been keeping closer tabs on Malcolm than he’d thought. Had Martin seen photos of his graduation with Gil and Jackie flanking him? Would he have people on the outside to feed him information on whenever Malcolm was back in the city to visit, or worse, people checking in on the validity of Malcolm’s cover story right now?

There’s no sense in speculating, and Malcolm has to trust that his father is so enraptured by his son finally proving to be just like him that he wouldn't poke holes in the fantasy.

“Maybe Gil will find a way to reduce my sentence,” Malcolm suggests.

Martin slides a pen through his fingers. There’s something dark edging his voice as he says, “Wouldn’t that be a thrill.”

Malcolm leaves a handful of notes behind in the pillowcase, stuffing the new pillow into it and ensuring that the papers are hidden on the bottom as he tosses the pillow towards the head of the bunk.

He tries to mentally file away the phrases ‘blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth man’ and ‘friends in low places’ to consider later in more depth, only he can’t stop turning them around in his mind. Friendship isn’t truly a concept for a psychopath like Martin. There’s no question his father would offer consultation in exchange for money or power or fame, but would he seek to gain authority over someone with none of their own? 

Although… he’d used the phrase ‘old friend’ which implies perhaps before Malcolm was even born, or at the very least too young for Martin to influence. If so, Martin might have found himself another potential killer to mentor and shape in his own image. Someone in his early to mid-twenties, impressionable and easily manipulated, someone to hang on his every word like gospel when he’d been at his prime and hunting—

A flash goes through Malcolm’s vision: the scent of trees and the sound of boots thumping behind him. Blood on his hands and a man shouting at him. Running in the woods away from the cabin and the camping wagon. Roots grabbing at his feet and branches whipping at his face. The vision hit a little too close to his dreams, and his lungs refuse to fill to capacity as he fights off the panic.

“Are you all right, son?” Martin says, halfway out of his chair before Malcolm can object.

“I’m fine,” Malcolm insists, thrusting a hand out. Martin knocks it aside and lays a hand on Malcolm’s chest to feel his rapidly rising heartbeat. Tips his head up with a strong, firm hand to check his pupils. Malcolm ceases to resist—what’s the point, now?—numb to everything and pliant. _Dissociating._ “My medication is still a little off. I had to bribe the nurse the other day because the doctor on staff tried changing up my usual prescriptions.”

Martin keeps his hand pressed to the center of Malcolm’s chest a little longer, then proceeds to give it a slow gentle rub like when he’d been nine and sick in bed with a cough. Despite everything, it helps ease the ache, and Malcolm instinctively begins to turn towards Martin.

He lets his father pull him into an embrace, strong arms wrapping around him. Malcolm shivers as he lays his cheek briefly against the soft knit of his father's sweater and sinks into the hug.

Patting him lightly on the back, Martin murmurs a promise into his hair. “You just let Dad take care of that, why don’t you. I’ll make sure there’s no more shenanigans with your meds.”

There’s a bang at the door, and Malcolm pulls guiltily away. He wraps his arms around himself tightly, avoiding looking at the guard.

“Mr. David, hello! Time for therapy already?” Martin asks. He murmurs out the side of his mouth to Malcolm, “Always lots to discuss,” and stands at the line to get cuffed 

“We can chat more later in the day,” Martin promises, as the guard walks him out. 

Alone again, Malcolm finds his way back to normal. It takes longer than it ought to. He moves hastily, but he’s still floating somewhere above himself. He watches himself shake out the pillow again, sort through the notes and his notepad and pull out anything that might provide a hint as to his real purpose here. He shakes his head, trying to cast aside the fog, and reviews each page, memorizing as much as he can before carefully and methodically getting rid of it all by ripping the paper into confetti-sized pieces and flushing it down the toilet.

When that’s done, he can at least breathe normally again, and his hands have stopped their tingling. He paces restlessly for a while, figuring out his next move. His gaze lands on his father’s desk, and he darts towards it.

Malcolm rifles through Martin’s things, forced to go frustratingly slow in order to leave no trace of his scrutiny. There are patient files, bundles of letters—some of them clearly reread many times—from The Surgeon’s fans, and drawings of a wide range of subjects. He glances at the door. If he’s lucky, he’s got ten minutes left.

He turns to the shelves, quickly scanning the spines of Martin’s journals. It takes a moment to understand the filing system, but once he does, he’s able to pluck the one he needs off the shelf.

There’s residue on the dark leather cover. Probably transfer from when someone had held it there as they flipped through. Malcolm touches the smudge and rubs the grit between the pads of his fingers. Brownish-red. Dried blood? He sniffs his fingers then the leather itself. There’s the faint whiff of oil. It could be residue from a pastel stick or a conte crayon, perhaps? 

He finds the missing pages, and the same residue has left a partial print on the next page. He doesn’t have time to enjoy the thrill of discovery, though, and slots the journal back in place, grabbing a novel before hurrying to his bunk to wait for Martin’s return.

The peeling paint at a pipe-fitting catches his eye, and Malcolm tips his head to the site. Maybe, he considers, the stain was a bit of rust.

There are plenty of places in Claremont left aging into disuse, but Martin would never treat his journals that way. Someone else touched those books, someone who wouldn’t notice that their hands weren’t clean enough to touch a page—a tradesman maybe, a “blue-collar” friend.

Malcolm pretends to read as he mulls it over, and he’d estimated correctly. Martin returns within minutes, but when his father sees him with his nose in a book, he lets him be. Malcolm would almost prefer the opposite, the echoes of when he’d been ten and Martin had staunchly defended him from his mother trying to get him to go outside and play hits too close to home. The words on the page blur.

* * *

Mealtime that night is in Martin’s— _their_ —cell.

Eating is even more difficult than usual.

“This is as best as it gets, my boy,” Martin tells him. He gestures with his spork. “Before I gave up meat, the Salisbury steak was the prison kitchen equivalent of a Michelin-star experience.”

“Why go vegan?” Malcolm asks, but shakes his head the moment he asks it and cuts an over-cooked carrot in two. “Nevermind. It forces them to cook or have something delivered especially for you.”

“One gets their sport where they can,” Martin says.

Malcolm chokes down the last of the potatoes and pushes his plate towards Martin. Just looking at the gravy congealing around the meat makes his stomach feel tender. “All yours.”

Briefly, Martin glances past him to the door. With no visitors and no commotion, Malcolm guesses Mr. David is at his chair, back leaning against the windows and counting down the time until he’s off shift. He must be right, because a small smile flickers across Martin's lips before he digs in to finish the rest of Malcolm’s unfinished food.

“Ohhh, that’s _good,”_ Martin says, with a rapturous moan. He sucks on the spork. Licks it clean. “I’ve missed this almost as much as I’ve missed you, Malcolm.”

* * *

Ignoring someone else on the toilet is one thing, but the humiliation of using it himself is another thing, entirely. It doesn’t matter that, logically, he knows Martin is no stranger to his bodily functions; there’s a world of difference between then and now. Malcolm takes care of business as quickly as possible and prepares for bed before the timer on the lights drench them in darkness.

“Do you need some help with those?” Martin asks. He looks up from his book and points at the restraints.

Just the thought of Martin coming over to help makes Malcolm’s guts twist. He’d _been_ fine, but suddenly his hand trembles so hard he can barely manage to slot the tongue through the buckle. He curls to the side to hide his fumbling.

“I’ve done this every night for the past ten years, I’ll be fine.”

“Suit yourself. Daddy can tuck you into bed anytime you want. I’m always happy to lend my cellmate a helping hand.”

The insinuation hangs in the air like the weight of an oncoming storm. Malcolm pops in his mouthguard and lays there staring at the ceiling, his mind endlessly chasing questions. 

Who has the right connections? Who has the access? He needs more time to actually go through the patient files stacked on Martin’s desk without the risk of leaving something out of place and raising suspicion. And what about that smudge on the journal? There must be someone acting as a conduit, a messenger pigeon for a consulting criminal.

Maybe thirty minutes pass when the sound of Martin pushing the covers down crackles through the stillness. In his own bunk, Malcolm’s body tenses, anticipating the sound of Martin rising and crossing over to loom at his bedside. To press a meaty hand over Malcolm’s mouth and slide in beside him.

He screws his eyes shut and doesn’t know if he’s dreaming. Does it even matter?

But Martin doesn’t leave his bunk, there’s just the faint, unmistakable sounds of him pleasuring himself. Malcolm holds his breath and realizes that’s just given him away. His father knows he’s awake and listening now.

His body reacts as it so often does in his dreams. He’s conditioned to it now. Maybe Martin does this every night—a masturbatory ritual that he’s not going to break just because he’s sharing the space with his son. If Malcolm ignores it, then what? Any sleep he gets will drag him towards terror or… a different version of this. That would be just as telling. Maybe worse. Malcolm worries at the plastic in his mouth with his teeth and tongue.

His fingernails dig into his palm as his cock fills with blood, jerks and swells until he’s throbbing, and he can’t hide the unnatural rhythm of his breath. Slowly and deliberately, Malcolm takes his mouthguard out. It falls forgotten to the blanket as he takes in a full, deep breath, cool air sucked through his teeth until his lungs ache to hold it.

With trip-wire tension, he exhales and eases his own bedding down to his thighs. He’d done this plenty of times in boarding school, but that had been all thrill. Now, the desire comes with a knife’s keen edge. He thumbs the waist of his pants down and lifts his shirt, and Martin’s next exhale carries a touch of sound.

As Malcolm takes hold of his cock, he dares to peek over and confirms that Martin is watching him, eyes gleaming in the dark. Malcolm licks his lips and hangs in that strange, familiar space between lust and terror that haunts him so often in his sleep. He can’t look away. 

The cuffs at his wrist jingle as he starts to stroke himself, and when Martin adjusts his own pace to match, Malcolm tastes blood in his mouth. He tongues the bite and forces himself to slow down before he loses it in just a few pulls. Martin matches him, stroke for stroke, and Malcolm rides a vicious, brutal thrill. He moves, and Martin follows, a marionette whose strings are tied to his sinful fingers.

His flesh burns as he edges himself, so sensitive that each drifting touch makes flames lick along his nerves. His orgasm hits him like a knife punched in his guts, cock twitching and spurting, striping his stomach hot and wet like blood, an arterial spray of wickedness.

He might have imagined the soft pleased sound that Martin makes when his limbs go boneless, but when he cleans up the mess left on his skin fingerful-by-fingerful, the sound Martin makes as he comes is unmistakable. Unforgettable. _Unforgivable._

Malcolm sucks his fingers clean—no tremble at all, steady as a rock—and as he watches Martin crumble thinks: _Ah, so this is what power feels like._

* * *

**_Day Nine, Tuesday: the exercise yard_ **

They don’t talk about what happened the night before.

If Malcolm hadn’t woken with the taste of his own come lingering bitter at the back of his throat, he wouldn’t have been nearly so certain that it had really happened.

“Did they teach you this at Quantico?” Martin asks. He gives the punching bag a nudge as Malcolm circles it, throwing all his frustration and regret behind his punches.

Sweat trickles down his spine and darkens the front of his shirt. With only a makeshift wrap wound between his knuckles, Malcolm’s hands hurt from repeatedly striking the bag. “Some of it.”

“Well, you’re very good,” Martin says.

Malcolm skips back as the bag swings towards him, timing his strike. Sparring at Quantico with other recruits was commonplace, but he’d learned everything he knew about boxing from Gil in a basement gym papered with posters of old championship fights.

_Hands up, city boy. You’re gonna get one in the jaw if you keep dropping your guard._

“Learned a bit from a friend in low places, too,” Malcolm says, daring to flash a grin. He’d built rapport during mealtimes, proved to Martin how alike they were in the pregnant dark, and now it was time to reel in that net that’s been sitting beneath the stagnant water. He keeps his feet moving, light and bouncing, and gestures between him and Martin. “Is your old friend like us, though?”

A delighted gleam flashes in Martin’s eye at Malcolm comparing the two of them favorably. 

“I hope you’re not upset that you weren’t my first, my boy, but as you’re presently demonstrating, practice makes perfect. To teach you, I had to teach others.”

“I always thought you worked alone.”

“I did, but a little help goes a long way. You don’t remember at all, do you? The camping trip.”

Malcolm shakes his head no. “Sometimes, I get flashes, but meds have left a lot of holes in my memory. None of that’s changed these past ten years.”

He bobs and weaves before landing a flurry of strikes and driving his knee into the bag. 

“It must be frustrating to see what this other protégé is doing to your work,” he says, stepping back, breathless. He swallows a few deep lungfuls of air and gestures. “To your legacy, I mean.”

Martin stops the bag, holding it in place as his gaze narrows. Malcolm wonders if he’s pushed too far too fast, but an idea springs to mind, and he takes a gamble.

“Unless there’s someone who’s betrayed you,” Malcolm suggests, preying on his father’s desire for control. “How else would the copycat have gotten pages from your journal?”

“My journals? Whatever do you mean?” Martin says, and Malcolm can barely spot the lie.

“The information hadn’t been made public; I only know because Ainsley let it slip,” Malcolm says. “She isn’t pleased to have to sit on such a juicy story.”

“You’ve spoken to your sister?” Martin says, his excitement left unmasked.

Malcolm unwinds the makeshift wrap from between his fingers. He flexes his hand and examines the angry red skin of his knuckles—no splits in the skin but plenty of bruising. He glances up to meet Martin’s gaze. “She’s in much the same position as I was when you were arrested,” he lies smoothly. Somehow, it feels easier today than ever. “I might not have been the best big brother, but she still idolized me. She’s still wondering: could he really be guilty? You’re probably right about mother and Gil, as well.”

“Interesting,” Martin says. There are gears turning now, machinations revolving, grinding relentlessly towards what Malcolm hopes will be to his advantage. Martin smiles and glances at the bag. “Here, son, why don’t I have a turn. You can teach me a few of those moves. Never too late to pick up new tricks, is it?”

“Sure,” Malcolm says, a smile that doesn’t belong to him carving his face. “My pleasure.”

He shifts his stance and waits for Martin to mirror him. This is it, the terrifying trap that he’s been dancing around: the lure of being coached into something with which to bond with his father. But he can’t turn back now.

“First things first, find your balance.”

Martin does so, with the sort of careful studiousness as when Malcolm had once shown him how to fold a boat out of a colorful square of paper. “Like this?”

“Perfect,” Malcolm says, and Martin’s smile turned to him is, as it once was—like the sun, brilliant and warm.

* * *

At mealtime, they’re chained together belt-to-belt and made to walk single file through the halls to the cafeteria. The previous night’s private dinner was seemingly Martin’s welcome home celebration, time reserved solely for him.

It tracks with his behavior, as during most meals they’d shared since his arrival, Martin has sought to spend time with him but hasn’t let Malcolm monopolize it. This is where Martin does his hunting, dazzling the other prisoners with that irresistible charm of his and taking every opportunity to get inside their heads.

Tonight two of the men who had been in the showers with them on Sunday are at their table: James and Bellanco. Anderson, meanwhile, is still sitting in solitary. Malcolm keeps a keen watch on James, who’d been all-too-eager to lay hands on him, and an even keener watch on Martin. Had it all been a test put into motion by his father? Martin’s desire to see how he handled himself? Or maybe he’s just being paranoid, and this is Martin’s way of ensuring that next time both men will be firmly on his side and no one else’s.

“I hear Hector’s out,” James says. He sips juice from a clear plastic cup.

“Wishing it had been you?” Martin asks.

James glances at Malcolm. He snorts. “Never had a chance, did I? Not since this pretty face showed up. Your boy can fight, _and_ he’s a looker.”

“Isn’t he though,” Martin says. “Maybe soon, he’ll call me Daddy, just like Hector. Isn’t that right, _son?_ ”

“Time will tell,” Malcolm replies. He remains wordless through the rest of the hour. If he needed any more proof of Martin’s obsession….

Martin only comments on his reticence when they’ve been back in their cell for a while. “You’ve been awfully quiet since dinner. Cat got your tongue?” he asks.

Malcolm lifts his gaze from his book and holds the page with his thumb. Martin’s gaze jumps more than once to his mouth, reminded perhaps of what that tongue had done the night before.

“Bit risky, don’t you think? Calling me son like that.”

Martin twists in his chair. “Pish. If they haven’t put it together by now, they won’t until the rest of the world does.

“Here’s to hoping,” Malcolm says.

“Indeed,” Martin murmurs.

* * *

He leaves his mouthguard at the sink. Martin doesn’t say a word about it. Later, when the lights go off, Malcolm’s already hard before the rustle of the sheets breaks the silence.

And this time, after he peels back his own bedding, he brings his fingers to his mouth to suck them wet. He rolls his head to the side to watch his father watching him, but this time, he doesn’t just keep his gaze locked to Martin’s. This time, he _looks_.

A yearning whisper of “Malcolm, my beautiful, beautiful boy,” skitters across the room.

“Dad,” he says, choking on the simple syllable as his fingers fall from his mouth. He reaches down between his legs to fuck himself on his fingers.

Once again, Martin matches the rhythm set by the jangling of Malcolm’s restraints.

And once again, after swallowing down the mess he spills onto his skin as if that’ll erase all evidence of the act itself, Malcolm doesn’t dream of anything at all.

* * *

**_Day Ten, Wednesday: individual therapy_ **

“I’ve been having incestuous thoughts and dreams,” Malcolm says, getting right to the heart of things.

“Your mother?”

Malcolm draws back abruptly, too genuinely shocked to hide his reaction. “What? No.” Carefully he schools his expression back to something more neutral. He’s definitely off his game today.

“Lately, I’ve been having dreams about my father. Among other things, I find myself getting sexually aroused at the thought of him touching me.”

She checks her notes. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know,” he says. He starts to shift, unconsciously looking to sit cross-legged in the chair—an impossibility given that he’s tethered to a bolt welded to the lip of the metal seat. “It’s definitely not a reaction to a repressed memory.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Memories come back to me differently. They’re flashes of sound and sensation. This is very different.”

Under the veneer of professional calm, the prison therapist seems honestly engaged and interested. Likely, she doesn’t get many patients who are willing to open up so easily on a second session. He explains the dream in the club, the one that mirrors real life. And with a few obfuscated details, talks about the power fantasy of masturbating in front of his father. How it terrified him while at the same time he wanted his father to come over and touch him and make it real.

He would never have told any of this to Gabrielle; it’s far easier to say to this woman he’ll probably never see again and won’t need to continue exploring his trauma with. Someone who he doesn’t want, deep down, to continue to like him.

“Do you think you feel a bit of unease with the idea of holding power over your father? That maybe this desire for him to touch you might represent a desire to return to the natural order of things?”

“Maybe,” Malcolm says. He considers the idea. He’d thought perhaps it all came down to his natural preferences for submission. That doesn’t fit the profile of his cover story, though, so he bites back the urge to explore the idea aloud. Instead, he shifts to lean forward and pursue a different, less personal topic. A narcissist like his father can charm nearly anyone, picking and choosing the right words to ensure that he earns their admiration. “Do you think a sociopathic narcissist would use the terminology of friendship to apply to someone under their control? Like a cult member, for example.”

“Friendship means different things to different individuals,” she answers neutrally. “What does friendship mean to you?”

Malcolm fires off a stock response, and immediately pivots the conversation back to his question. “Forget the sociopathy,” he says, shackled hand waving at the wrist to dismiss the idea. “Let’s focus on an extreme narcissist. My father kept his second life a secret masterfully, but if he saw me as an extension of himself—of his best qualities—is it possible that he might want to grant me access to his own network of followers?”

“This secret second life of your father’s,” she says, and checks her notes. “You mentioned, quote, ‘a second job, women other than my mother’, are you telling me that your father was the leader of a cult?”

“I’d appreciate it if you answered my question,” Malcolm says, with a smile that lives on his lips alone.

“I don’t see why not,” she replies, voice carrying a hint of stress. Malcolm immediately feels guilty, but he hangs on every word as she lends credence to his theory.

For the remainder of their session, he turns the conversion to bland topics that don’t push either of their buttons while mulling everything over in the back of his mind.

* * *

He remains thoughtful and somewhat withdrawn throughout the rest of the day, and though he can feel Martin’s scrutiny fall frequently upon him, it isn’t until after Malcolm’s brushed his teeth and Martin’s preparing to do the same that his father comments on his mood.

“Intense session in therapy today, my boy?” he asks, glancing over while squeezing toothpaste from the tube.

 _A little more, son, the size of a pea, remember._ Malcolm recalls standing on a short stool in front of the sink and Martin helping guide his hand. _There we are, perfect. Now a pea is also just about the same size as the pituitary gland. Do you remember where that is in the brain?_

“You could say that,” Malcolm responds. He flips back the covers on his bunk, and it feels like, by doing so, he’s begun a countdown.

But this time when the lights go out, there’s no sound save for his own anticipatory breathing.

And when he finally drifts to sleep unsettled and unsatisfied, he dreams of birds and leaves and his hands wet and bloodied around the hilt of a knife.


	5. I am a malady, you are my galaxy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this is canon divergent, there is one notable change in the epilogue that pushes this further on an alternate timeline than the rest. Roll with it.

**_Day Eleven, Thursday: group therapy_ **

At the end of the morning meal, Chavez pulls Malcolm aside before Mr. David can get him tethered in a line to Martin again.

“These two aren’t supposed to be separated,” Mr. David says, giving Chavez a once-over.

“Warden says I can have Bright here for a little one-on-one chat.”

Mr. David doesn’t look convinced, especially when Chavez sneaks a glance at Malcolm that speaks volumes about the role he’s decided to play. Mr. David calls it in to confirm, and as the voice at the other end of the radio gives the go ahead, Martin’s attention settles on Malcolm. There’s absolutely nothing in his eyes to betray his thoughts, but Malcolm knows that he’s wondering who’s bid higher and why and how.

“I’ll get him back to you in one piece,” Chavez promises, and pushes Malcolm towards the door that connects the cafeteria to the commissary and the prison laundry. When they’re tucked inside a small supply cabinet, Chavez braces his back against the wall to block the little window set in the door and tells Malcolm the Bureau wants to pull him out.

“You can’t,” Malcolm says. “My father’s talking, he trusts me, and the minute I have time alone with his patient records, I can confirm my suspicions that Carter Berkhead is the copycat.”

“Berkhead’s alibi is—”

“Predicated on travel logs for his private jet and some extremely flimsy affidavits,” Malcolm interjects. “I’m more positive than I was a week ago. Martin mentioned overcompensation, and that would fit Berkhead to a tee—the fourth victim, his wife, she didn’t have the rope marks because he didn’t need to lure her in using the dom. But that’s not the only reason I need a little more time. There’s another killer Martin has worked with who may still be operating undetected. I think he’s also connected to this case. There’s a partial print in one of Martin’s journals.”

Chavez’s nostrils flare on a noisy exhale and he studies Malcolm’s face. “I can buy you one more night. We check the cell now, together, while Whitly is in the showers.”

“One more thing,” Malcolm says, extending his hand as he thinks it through. “I want you to contact my sister and have her come in tomorrow to do an interview with me. Basic setup, single camera.”

“What for?”

“Well, for one it’ll serve as an explanation as to why you were able to get the Warden to agree to pull me aside. I'm not convinced my father believes you were looking to assault me. For my mother to be behind it all feeds into his narrative that she’s trying to thwart him, and the idea of her on a crusade to have my side of the story told will be equally compelling.”

“Anything else?”

Malcolm mulls it over. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Chavez or the Bureau, but he trusts Gil more. “Have Detective Tarmel from NYPD Major Crimes serve as her cameraman in case anything goes wrong. He told me he’d helped out with a documentary crew when he’d been deployed, so he knows his way around a camera.

“Even though it will be my interview, my father won’t be able to resist throwing a wrench in what he believes are my mother’s plans, and he certainly won’t be able to resist making himself look good for an audience. If we’re lucky we find out exactly how he was in contact with the copycat and we get some details about this other killer.”

“All right, you got it,” Chavez says, and leads Malcolm back to the cell. As Chavez stands watch, Malcolm carefully removes the page with the fingerprint from his father’s journal, then starts to sort through the box of patient records on Martin’s desk. He knew it. He waves a file folder at Chavez, validation a heady rush. “Berkhead is in here. Hopefully this is enough to get a warrant.”

“It better be.”

Malcolm tucks the journal page in with the file and passes it to Chavez who slides the lot under his shirt. Hopefully Martin won’t miss the one, or have any cause to go looking through his files.

“Good luck,” Chavez tells him.

“Thanks.”

He breathes a little easier once Chavez is gone, and does a second check to ensure that nothing looks like it’d been moved out of place or he’s left any glaringly obvious indicators to reveal that his father’s things have been disturbed. 

There’s maybe five minutes before Mr. David will be bringing him back in here, freshly showered. Malcolm strips off his shirt and grabs his kit to do a quick wash up straight in the sink. He isn’t too broken up about missing a handful of time in the shower room with Martin. If last night Martin had been giving him space, after this morning’s yoga routine, his father’s hungry looks had returned full force.

It’s been...confusing. Malcolm splashes water across his chest, nipple tightening as his palm rubs over his skin. He considers what the therapist had suggested yesterday, that some of his twisted longing is tied to a “desire to return to the natural order of things”. It’s a very simplistic reading of the situation, but it might not be that far off the mark. Of course he wants things to be the way they used to. He’s rarely lied to himself about that.

Not that it ever used to be like _this_ , at least not in those halcyon days of boyhood that his mind likes to dredge up to torture him.

But even if his father had been the perfect dad before everything came crumbling down, as Malcolm had gotten older, he’d found a way, hadn’t he, to believe he could remain deeply connected to Martin. A reason beyond sentimentality to be held again in those strong arms—only tighter and closer. 

When he’d turned eighteen and started visiting Claremont alone on weekends and evenings and in any spare scrap of time he could without Gil or his mother finding out, he knew Martin was desperate to have him there. He’d never questioned that. 

Already, he’d begun studying human psychology, how narcissism and sociopathy present together and trying to poke holes in decades of research to prove that Martin was different. That his father had wanted Malcolm to stay, not because it meant he’d remain the center of Malcolm’s world, but because he _loved_ him.

He’d been flush with hormones, his few real friends pushed away or already gone to college, and the fantasy had been so tantalizing. So _taboo_. Another secret to hide away under his bed. A secret he’d never share and that no one could take away from him.

But now? Now, he doesn’t have youth and a budding chemical dependency to blame for his wantonness.

Malcolm looks down at where his cock hangs half-hard, fattened just by the idea of Martin coming in to find him half-naked at the sink with water glistening on his skin. He wouldn’t be able to do anything in the middle of the day, but he’d look, and he’d lust, and he’d count down the minutes until lights out.

Just like Malcolm is.

* * *

He’s still uncomfortably distracted by thoughts of Martin fucking him when they’re choosing chairs in group therapy. This time he ends up seated directly opposite Martin.

They begin with an exercise all about expressing emotion through body language—something Malcolm is an expert in. Most everyone in the group remains predictable, demonstrating anger or sadness with the skill of an improv class full of high school freshmen. Every moment of theirs is underpinned by reluctance or boredom or keen embarrassment. The outliers are a big man named Tevin who is always looking for a chance to get more eyes on him, and of course Martin, who needs no practice in expressing any emotion on a whim.

In fact, Martin is rising from his seat to deliver the soliloquy from Doctor Faustus, broadly gesturing to punctuate his words, face moving through terror and anguish and the depth of yearning. 

_”Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, a hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd! O, no end is limited to damned souls! Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?”_

Malcolm watches enraptured. It’s so like the bedtime stories Martin used to tell, cycling through voices, leaping up to act out the most exciting scenes. Even Dr. Higa looks alarmingly entranced before he’s urging Martin to sit and ushering them all on to the next exercise. 

They go around the room once, reflecting on how expressing emotion makes them feel, and then they’re brought back to the subject of gratitude again. Martin, still flying high on the reaction to his performance, asks to go first.

Dr. Higa waves for him to continue.

“I’m so grateful to have young Malcolm here in the group with us again. What a joy to have someone with the same name as my son so close to me. I’ve missed hearing it: _Malcolm_ ,” Martin smiles and repeats it a second time more softly, the flash of his teeth hiding the vicious joy he must be feeling as he holds the truth hostage. “In fact, what about a little roleplay to express all these emotions I’m feeling right now. I could tell my boy how I truly feel.”

Hector scowls, but Martin doesn’t even look his way. He’s staring directly at Malcolm now, simply waiting for the go ahead that he knows will come.

“Keep it brief, Martin,” Dr. Higa says.

“Since you remind me so much of my boy, I’ll have you play the part,” Martin says, he clears his throat and scoots to the very edge of his chair.

“Sure,” Malcolm says, meeting his gaze without reservation. “Go ahead, dad.”

“Ah, there’s something else I’ve missed hearing,” Martin breathes. He runs his tongue over his lower lip and scrapes it clean before patting his thighs to signal he’s ready to begin. “Malcolm, my boy, you have no idea how wonderful it is to see you again. My, how you’ve grown.”

“It’s been a long time,” Malcolm says.

“Ten years and forty-four days, but who’s counting? One minute, you’re off to college, fresh-faced, and now here you are all grown up. A well-respected and handsome Federal Agent.” Martin spreads his hands to gesture to Malcolm.

Malcolm stifles any reaction to his title. “Why have I come back?”

“Because you need my help, of course! Just like you used to, when you were working on your papers. All those essays you had to write when you should’ve been out sowing wild oats. That’s what your college years should’ve been, my boy: a time for _experimentation_.” The way he says it laces it with a darker, uglier meaning.

“Maybe I was doing both,” Malcolm says, arching a brow. The group around them is riveted, fascinated by the way he’s playing opposite Martin. It isn’t often, he imagines, that any of them have seen someone go toe-to-toe with Martin and not simply cave to his charms or regurgitate a script they’re fed.

“Oh, I’m sure you were, and you kept your options open, if I remember correctly. You made it a point to make it very clear to me that you weren’t quote ‘interested solely in women’,” Martin says. “I take it that must still be true. Who’s been warming your bed these days?”

“No one, unfortunately. I’ve had to make do recently with my own hand,” Malcolm says, raising it and giving his fingers a little wiggle. “But, I’ll tell you this in exchange for whatever help you’re going to provide, Dr. Whitly: I do enjoy a good, hard fuck by someone who is real Daddy-material.”

Dr. Higa clears his throat. “This conversation is turning inappropriate.”

“Is it,” Martin says, distractedly. “How long have you felt this way, Malcolm?”

Malcolm shrugs, pretending as if he’s making things up off the top of his head. “Ten years.”

“So, you turned away from the real thing only to make do with pale substitutes. I shouldn’t have held out for a conjugal with your backstabbing mother, should I, when you were so ready to give it up to your dear old dad in exchange for a bit of help on your homework. How ever did I miss that?”

Dr. Higa clears his throat even louder. “I don’t think those are the sorts of thoughts you should be having for your own son, Martin. Do you?”

Martin slides back in his chair and crosses his arms. He doesn’t tear his eyes away from Malcolm as he says, “No, I suppose not.”

* * *

The tension that hangs in their cell for the rest of the day and on into evening is palpable. It makes every movement and every gesture between them carry weight. Each glance couriers meaning. Even the turn of a page beneath Malcolm’s fingers becomes its own message to Martin. The longer it takes him to read a handful of paragraphs, the more Martin knows Malcolm’s thoughts lie elsewhere.

Presently, they’re rolling around somewhere in the gutter. If he’s not turning over the facts of the case in his mind, he’s imagining _himself_ turning over, and Martin’s hands running up under the cotton of his prison uniform. How many times has he dreamed about it over the years?

How many times has he lain on his belly and let some random older man fuck him and breathe obscenities against his neck. Enjoyed the hot curl low in his guts whenever they called him boy or _son_. Sat with the poison of it in his blood for days when he’d jerk off to the memory, and—no matter how good the fuck—it was never their face that he pictured. How many times has he tried desperately to forget each encounter and pretend otherwise until the next time someone caught his eye.

Malcolm subtly adjusts himself, and the minutes crawl by.

When it’s time to get ready for bed, he’s settled into a certain kind of calmness. He’s in the eye of the storm, now. The last time he’d felt like this was on a farm in eastern Tennessee with the sound of cicadas pulsing in the air.

If Martin watches him do a finger check on the toilet, he doesn’t notice. It doesn’t matter right now what Martin is thinking, what matters is what will happen when the lights click off. Malcolm drifts through the motions of washing his hands and brushing his teeth, staring at his own serene reflection. His stubble has grown back, and he looks like himself again—presentable and whole on the surface—a welcome reminder that even dressed in industrial white, he is Special Agent Malcolm Bright of the FBI.

And if underneath it all, he’s a jagged vision of what he’s meant to be, a broken vessel that’s been leaking out for twenty years, he’s still a weapon in the right hands.

He lays down and clips himself in. He closes his eyes and waits.

The lights shut off, and when the sweep of the flashlight for the bed check is gone, he opens his eyes to the darkness.

He releases his cuffs and hears the shift in Martin’s breath, the way it stops entirely—held in aching lungs as Malcolm gets out of bed and crosses the room. There’s no smile on Martin’s mouth, not now, just a soft exhale between parted lips that stokes the embers in Malcolm’s belly.

He puts a finger to his mouth to signal silence and eases Martin’s covers down. He takes a brief moment to look upon his ruin before sliding wordlessly into the space his father makes for him.

He feels the shape of Martin’s words against his temple— _my boy_ —and for a moment the calm shatters, his entire body shaking as Martin gathers him close. He regains his composure piece by piece, although he’s never quite able to still the trembling as he slides a leg between Martin’s and feels the growing hardness of his father’s cock press into the meat of his thigh.

“No more substitutes that pale to the real thing,” Malcolm whispers, hips rolling to push his own eager cock against Martin for him to feel. When Martin is as hard as he is, he rises up on his knees and shoves his shorts down and spits on his hand. “No more inept and inadequate copycats.”

Martin catches his arm above the heavy weight of the cuff and stops him before he can slick himself wet. His grip threatens to bruise. “Not like this, son,” he says.

For a heartbeat, Malcolm wonders if Martin prefers to bottom—if they’re alike in that way, too—but then his father’s eyes are darting to his desk. “The top drawer has a magnet catch. There are a few supplies hidden away for special occasions. This certainly qualifies,” he says, and his grip softens, his thumb drifting through the hair on the back of Malcolm’s forearm. “My beautiful boy deserves only the best from me.”

Malcolm knows precisely the stash Martin means, and he peels off his shirt and ditches his shorts entirely before he goes to raid it. His eyes have adjusted now to the moonlight, and he knows Martin is enjoying the view of his nude body as he bends over to reach into the very back of the drawer to release the false back. His fingers find the tube of medical-grade lubricant and drift briefly over the other items he’d found there previously: the crude plastic shiv melted and molded from a prepaid phone card; a blocky, old Nintendo GameBoy; a half-dozen eight balls and baggies of coke; the handful of well-worn photos… and something else that must’ve caught on the magnet when he’d found the false backing the first time.

He leaves the lubricant on the blotter to reach back in and withdraw a feather-light bracelet hung with tiny charms. The same one, golden and delicate, that Martin had been holding in his dream.

“What is this?” he asks. Something swirling in his guts turns the cool air to an icy chill. There’s stone beneath his feet. A creaking lid opening before him. The smell of blood in his nostrils.

“That?” Martin says. He lifts himself up on one elbow to gesture at the bracelet dripping from Malcolm’s fingers. “A little memento. One of a rare few. You know that I was never really one to keep trophies, but John, he… well, he’s a lot more sentimental than I am.”

The name jolts Malcolm away from the edges of his rising panic. “Who’s John?” he asks, as he undoes his cuffs and drops them on the desk. He can feel Martin’s gaze sharpen as he releases the tiny catch and hangs the bracelet on his own wrist. “Is he your old friend?”

“One of a few, but the most reliable. He comes to visit now and again to talk shop or give me little updates on how quickly your mother is drinking herself to death….” Martin says, his gaze trapped now on the gold flashing against Malcolm’s skin as he returns to the bed. Martin licks his lips and points at the bracelet. “Are you going to keep that on? While we—?”

He twists his wrist this way and that. The bracelet fits him well enough that probably whoever had worn it had similar bone structure. “Does it make you uncomfortable?” Malcolm asks, straddling Martin’s lap. He unscrews the cap on the tube with his teeth. 

“Uncomfortable? No,” Martin says. He eases back down into the pillows, and his gaze pulls away from the trinket to wander freely over Malcolm’s body. He doesn’t jump to erogenous zones like every other sex partner Malcolm’s had, but takes his time to study every dip and curve of muscle he can see.

“I never took trophies either, unless you count what ended up in my case files,” Malcolm says, breath hitching slightly as he starts to open himself up. Already he can imagine what it’s going to feel like to scoot forward and sink down on something thicker than his fingers. His stomach tenses with anticipation. He tongues the spot in his cheek still tender from the other night.

“Why keep them when you can keep the memories,” Martin says, breathy and reverent.

“Exactly,” Malcolm agrees. He fucks himself on his fingers, cock bobbing in the air. Now Martin’s eyes are drawn there, to the blood-thickened proof of his arousal.

Slowly, Martin pushes down the waist of his pants to free his own cock, and Malcolm moans at the sight of it. He shouldn’t want to taste it as badly as he does. His mouth waters at the thought of welcoming it past his lips to tongue the wide flare of the head.

“You know, son, I had a body like yours once,” Martin says, fisting his cock and thumbing the bead of wetness at the slit. “The good life, though it may have treated me well, certainly did a number on my waistline.”

“I like your body,” Malcolm says. He squeezes out one more glob of gel onto his finger before he caps the lubricant and tosses it towards the bottom of the bed. His hand trembles only a little as he slowly and deliberately wipes it onto the crown of Martin’s cock. He watches mesmerized as Martin smears it over himself. “I always have.”

Malcolm’s mouth goes from wet to dry in seemingly an instant as he touches his hands to his father’s belly. Hair tickles under his palms as he drags them up to brace over the heavy thud of Martin’s heart. “You were—are—so much stronger than me,” he says, inching forward. “Always wished I’d taken more after you than I did mother.”

“Oh, my boy,” Martin purrs. “You’re perfect. You took after me in the only way it matters.”

“Did I? I only managed thirteen, that’s only a little more than half your count,” Malcolm says, knees skidding wider as he tilts his hips. He chokes on a breath when Martin angles his cock, and he feels the blunt head kiss hot against his hole. His own cock leaps with a fresh, dizzying rush of blood to thicken it to shining.

“You think you bagged yourself more than half my count? Son, please,” Martin scoffs. He tongues at his teeth as he nudges himself ready to enter Malcolm’s body, and his eyes flick up, darkly gleaming. “Give it another five years and you might’ve gotten close to the true number.”

“I knew it,” Malcolm says with a grin. He exhales a sound that’s almost a laugh as he sinks back onto Martin’s cock. If a part of him hates how easily—how hungrily—he’s taking his father’s cock inside him, it’s buried under the rush of triumph pumping thick in his veins. A shiver, electric and thrilling, seizes him as he feels Martin’s cock push past the last bit of resistance and sink into him, thick and filling. “Don’t tell me the number, I don’t want to know.”

He does, and he’ll figure it out eventually.

Martin’s eyes narrow into slits, pleasure warping his mouth into a soft ‘o’. “You feel exquisite, Malcolm,” he says, his hands sliding over Malcolm’s thighs and back and settling, eventually, on his ass. He takes handfuls of each cheek, squeezing and spreading them apart as he lifts his hips to thrust into Malcolm. He groans long and low, and Malcolm echoes him, their voices humming together as their bodies join more completely.

Malcolm keeps his hands anchored to Martin’s chest. The rhythm of their fucking ripples through the long stretch of Martin’s abdominal muscles to the attachment points at the base of the ribs and then up, through bone and fascia and layers of subcutaneaous tissue into where the heels of Malcolm’s hands press indents into his father’s skin. Malcolm’s nails dig small crescents into Martin’s chest when that rhythm speeds, going from gently exploring to driving small sounds out of him.

The bracelet shivers on his wrist. Flesh quivers between his thighs.

Sweat gathers in the valleys and dips of his body as raw sensation builds and builds. He clenches and feels an answering swell. “I need to tell you a secret, Dad,” Malcolm says.

“Oh?” Martin sounds lost in pleasure. No different than any man who’s fucked Malcolm with little thought given to anything other than getting his dick wet. But then his gaze comes into needle-sharp focus, and Malcolm’s pulse turns rabbit fast. The steady push of Martin’s hips stills, and his hands on Malcolm’s waist stop their aimless caressing.

“I expect you knew that guard was passing me messages.”

Martin’s hold on him turns hard and demanding. He hasn’t ceased moving, not entirely, grinding himself against Malcolm. “Of course. I’d thought you’d paid him off yourself until yesterday, but it was clear as day, my boy, that you had no idea he was going to pull you away from me,” he says. There’s an implication there, in the clutch of his fingers, that no one will pull Malcolm away again.

“Mother wants to ‘help me tell my story’, it seems,” Malcolm says. “You were right.”

“I always am.” Another surge thickens Martin’s cock. The thrill of vindication. The ecstasy of control.

Malcolm feels it, too, humming in the very marrow of his bones. 

“Tomorrow,” he says, leaning down to brush a smile against Martin’s lips, “Ainsley is going to come here to Claremont and interview me. If we play it right, I’ll get out of here early, and then the real fun begins.”

“Whatever you need, son,” Martin whispers. He moves his mouth against Malcolm’s, lips catching as his beard tickles Malcolm’s face. “You say jump, and I’ll ask how high.”

Malcolm knows that’s a complete and utter lie. Perhaps in the moment his father actually believes it, but while he can certainly get Martin to dance to his tune, it’ll never be by such simple measures. “If I get out of here, do you want me to take care of that copycat for you?” Malcolm asks.

“There’s no need to worry about him, anymore.”

Malcolm can’t quite hide his startlement. “No?”

“If they reopen your case, there will be appeals, bureaucratic red tape to get through, a month or two of it at the very least before a judge comes into the picture. That sadistic imbecile will be taken care of by then, I’m sure… one way or another,” Martin says. He lets his tongue roll out to lick wet across Malcolm’s lip, and Malcolm can’t hide the shock to his system from that, either.

Martin’s lips slide easily over his now, and he parts to the questing push of his father’s tongue. It doesn’t trigger that same hot twist low in his belly, but he goes tense as the kiss deepens. It’s more real, more intimate somehow than anything else up until this point. He can’t find the wherewithal to consider what Martin had meant by Berkhead being taken care of ‘one way or another’ when he’s being torn apart by the soft lick of his father’s tongue against his own.

“Dad, I–” he whimpers into Martin’s mouth, a bitterness in the back of his throat as he shakes with lust. His pulse throbs in his skull, in his aching cock, in the muscles taut around where Martin is buried inside him….

“I know, son,” Martin coos soothingly, “to be reunited only to be separated again so _quickly._ ” He drops feathery kisses in a path along Malcolm’s jaw then his neck, the brush of his beard as soft as his lips as he murmurs, “I am so glad you’ve finally opened up to me.”

Innuendo, still. Malcolm quirks a smile as his head tips back to invite a sucking kiss at the base of his throat. Under the wordplay, though, lies a potential threat. It’s possible Martin’s unraveled everything and knows full well that tomorrow isn’t an interview but an extraction.

Martin’s mouth finds his again, no longer a gentle exploration but a hungry thrust. His father’s tongue drags across his palate and licks along his teeth. The faint jangle of nerves turns into klaxons when Martin’s lips peel back, and there’s vitriol in his tone as he hisses, “Come tomorrow, anyone thinking they can play me like a fiddle will learn how very wrong they are.”

A guttural groan punctures the air between them, and Martin claims another kiss. He chases Malcolm’s mouth until he’s sitting upright and cradling Malcolm with arms wrapped tight as a straightjacket. “Believe me, Malcolm. I’ll take care of _everything,_ ” Martin promises. He twists, brute force becoming momentum and flipping them around.

The air gets driven out of Malcolm twice: first, when his back hits the cot, springs rattling in the frame, and a second time, when Martin reaches between his legs to crudely shove back into him.

It’s a jolt of pleasure and a jolt of fear, something he ought to be accustomed to after so many nightmares, but he can’t wake up from this. Martin’s weight crushes him to the bed, and the bright flash of his smile threatens to devour him alive.

“Dad,” he says, panic swelling within the cage of his ribs.

“Hush, son. Let go. Let me make you feel good,” Martin says. He presses a soft kiss to the center of Malcolm’s forehead before easing up onto his wrists to look down at the join of their bodies.

Malcolm’s gaze follows, and he forces his breath into the cadence of Martin’s hips—the slow roll that sends his belly brushing lightly over Malcolm’s cock. If he’d flagged at all, it was only for a moment, and he can’t stop looking. This, he thinks both appalled and appeased, is the natural order of things. The tightness in his chest stops feeling like terror and more like longing. If he never left, would it be so bad? People kill one another every day. He’ll never stop the tide.

No, he can’t think like that. All lives have value, even his own with its wretched wanting.

Deliberately, Malcolm licks his palm wet and reaches between them to fist his cock. He lifts his gaze back to his father’s face and strokes himself to the rhythm Martin sets, as if by extension experiencing what Martin is feeling.

“My sweet boy, when you walk out of Claremont a free man, I won’t let you leave me behind so easily,” Martin whispers.

Whatever Martin’s means by that—a declaration of escape, a promise to guide Malcolm’s killing, or a threat predicated on seeing right through Malcolm’s cover—the words sink into Malcolm’s skin and settle there. He shudders, his mouth falling open on a gasp. His father is right. He writhes as Martin fucks into him harder, and he doesn’t stop the sounds of pleasure from pouring out of him as he wraps his legs around Martin and welcomes the end.

Malcolm clings tightly to his father and accepts this invisible, indelible mark upon him, signed in shared blood and the violent shots of come splashing hot across his belly.

* * *

  
**_Day Twelve, Friday: media attention_**

Malcolm wakes up alone in Martin’s bed, disoriented more by the lack of restraints than anything else. He sits up slowly, cataloging the sensations in his body and his surroundings as he always does to confirm that he is, indeed, awake. The bracelet still hangs on his wrist. The charms have left tiny indentations into his skin.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Martin says cheerily from beside the toilet, words garbled by the toothbrush in his mouth.

“Only mother ever calls me that.”

Martin spits into the sink and rinses his mouth. “Well, today is all about controlling the narrative, and that starts with ensuring your mother doesn’t. She’s going to want to paint you as a victim. You need to convince the public that you’re a hero.”

“And how am I going to do that?”

“The only thing the public loves more than a good conspiracy is well-deserved comeuppance, and there must be _someone_ deserving of that in the FBI.”

“Imply a frame job and corruption in the Bureau and figure out who to pin it on later?”

“Precisely, my boy. With a great deal of money and a few strings, records can be lost, stolen, or bought.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Malcolm says, rising to his feet. He rescues his boxer briefs from the floor and steps into them, not bothering to pull them all the way up when he still needs to piss. “It didn’t work for you, though.”

Martin moves out of the way to let him use the toilet and sink. “True, but unlike you, I had a very public trial. One look at my two little angels and that devil in a nice dress with her crocodile tears—the public had already decided I was a monster.”

Malcolm tips his head in acknowledgement. He can’t argue with that. He goes through the rest of his morning routine as usual: meds and meditation, even the yoga. The metal on his wrist catches his eye every so often as he moves from pose to pose, and he wonders if Martin will ask for it back. When he’s gone through a few flows—enough to loosen his limbs and remind him of all the pleasant aches left from the night before—he pads across to Martin’s things and grabs up the long-sleeved thermal his father often wears beneath his prison uniform.

“Do you mind?” he asks, holding it up.

“All yours,” Martin says. “Little big for you, though, isn’t it?”

“That’s the point,” Malcolm says, hauling it on. With the stretch of the knit it doesn’t hang too loosely on his frame, but it’s definitely over-large. “The smaller I look, the less threatening I seem.”

“Clever.”

Malcolm rolls the sleeve back twice, leaving the bracelet hidden beneath the cuff, then puts the rest of his uniform on. “How do I look?”

Martin studies him for a bit. “Almost perfect,” he says, and gestures for Malcolm to join him at the toilet again. He produces a safety razor from his shower kit and turns on the tap. “Let’s freshen you up. You look a good ten years younger without that attempt at a beard. If you’re going to go for less threatening, you might as well aim for youthful as well.”

“I can do this myself,” Malcolm says, even as he’s stepping into the space Martin has left for him. Their reflections hover in the small stand mirror propped atop the toilet—Martin is nearly a good head taller as he looks down to meet Malcolm’s gaze in the reflection.

“Of course you can, my boy, but isn’t it more fun when Dad does it for you?” Martin lines himself snugly against Malcolm’s back as he reaches around him to grab the small bar of soap and work up a bit of lather. He dabs it off his fingers onto Malcolm’s face, and Malcolm can’t help but wonder what it would be like if it wasn’t a colorful plastic handle nestled in Martin’s palm but the polished wood of an old straight razor. “Do you remember how you were always asking me when you’d be able to grow a beard?”

A genuine smile curves his mouth. “I do.”

“Well, seems that day may never come, you’re a little patchy on the sides,” Martin teases, the blade sweeping without a scratch through the little bare spot near his jawline that refuses to fill in.

Malcolm nearly ducks his head in a self-deprecating laugh, but Martin clucks his tongue and puts hard fingers beneath Malcolm’s chin. The sudden pressure there makes Malcolm swallow thickly, and the air around them turns electric. The hairs on the back of his knuckles and at the nape of his neck rise, gooseflesh prickling along his skin. He sees the flutter of his lashes in the mirror and the gentle press of Martin’s cock high on his ass slowly turns into a more insistent nudge. Swallowing again, Malcolm shifts his weight slightly, until they’re lined up perfectly, the trapped length of Martin’s cock riding the cleft of his ass.

Would his father be so bold and want to fuck him again here in broad daylight, in full view of anyone approaching in the hall? The thought terrifies him as much as it turns him on.

But Martin doesn’t even grind against him. His father doesn’t so much as acknowledge the way Malcolm’s breath has turned faint and shallow as it passes through his parted lips. Martin simply holds him steady as the razor scrapes against his skin, a quiet rasping scratch that leaves him looking almost as he did the first time he’d tried to walk away from this cell.

“You’re nervous,” Martin says, gently rinsing away the bits of soap clinging in narrow lines on Malcolm’s face. “I can read your face as easily as all those books I read to you as a boy.”

“Can you,” Malcolm says, throat dry. The possibility remains that Martin has known all along why he’s come here.

 _“I regret now,’ said he, ‘having helped you in your late inquiries, or having given you the information I did,”_ Martin quotes from memory.

After a beat, Malcolm realizes Martin means for him to speak the part of Dantès. _“Why so?”_

 _“Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart—that of_ vengeance.”

Malcolm sucks in his lower lip and scrapes it clean. He smiles. _“Let us talk of something else...”_

 _“...said he,”_ Martin finishes and picks up the thread, stepping away from Malcolm to recite the entire passage with gusto. He presses his hand to his chest as he refers to Abbé Faria’s conversation containing “many useful and important hints”, and it doesn’t require any playacting for Malcolm to listen in admiring attention as Dantès had. It never did.

Eventually, it’s Malcolm’s turn again, a grin stretching his face wide as he quotes the passage back as easily as Martin had. All thought of anything beyond the words stored in his memory are forgotten as he paces the cell, saying: _“... so learned a person as yourself would prefer absolute solitude to being tormented with the company of one as ignorant and uninformed as myself. If you will only agree to my request, I promise you never to mention another word about escaping.”_

 _"Alas, my boy,”_ Martin says, circling Malcolm as they parrot back and forth the remainder of Faria and Dantès’ scene. Until, eventually, Martin catches him by the arm, grip tight above the elbow, and the dance is paused.

 _“Well, then,”_ Malcolm says, breathing fast now, exhilarated. He licks his lips, gaze flickering to Martin’s mouth, close enough again to kiss. _“What shall you teach me first? I am in a hurry to begin. I want to learn.”_

Martin’s gaze hangs on his mouth in turn for a moment then flicks past him. When he speaks again, Martin deviates from the script. “Nothing,” his father answers, and nods towards the hall. “Your fair sister approaches the abbe’s chamber.”

* * *

JT and Ainsley aren’t allowed in until both he and Martin are tethered to the wall. It’s the first time Malcolm has had to wear the belt. The heavy leather sits uncomfortably against his hip bones, and as with the individual therapy sessions, he never quite realizes how much he uses his hands to talk until he can only move them so far.

There’s a nervousness in him at not having been able to brief Ainsley beforehand, but he has to trust that Gil and Chavez have given her enough coaching. All she has to do is ask him a few leading questions about his “case”, and he can use the conversation to light the fuse that leads straight to Martin.

He’d said single camera, but they’ve brought in two, and it takes about fifteen minutes for them to set them up along with the lights. Martin swivels in his desk chair and makes idle chit chat through it all, asking Ainsley questions that she mostly manages to ignore.

“No makeup?” Martin asks. “Your brother’s _very_ handsome, but he could use a touch of concealer under the eyes. He didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Sitting on the edge of his cot with his eyes closed, Malcolm ignores the chatter and keeps his breathing steady. All he needs to do now is get Martin to provide a little more information on Carter Berkhead or whomever it was who took that page out of this cell. Getting a hit off a partial isn’t likely, so if a judge doesn’t give them a warrant for Berkhead based on the patient file, they’re going to need whatever information Malcolm can provoke out of Martin.

“Okay,” Ainsley says, “I think we’re ready. Malcolm, can you please take a seat?”

“Please,” Martin repeats in a whisper, then hisses out the side of his mouth: “Such good manners. Your mother must be proud.”

Ainsley ignores their father so completely that it makes _Malcolm_ proud. He takes a seat in the folding chair and blinks as his eyes adjust to the lights shining on him. JT takes up position at the camera behind Ainsley, positioned perfectly to intercept Martin if somehow he were to manage to break free of the tether and cross the red safety line.

“Both cameras are up and talking to each other. We’re good,” JT says, playing his part perfectly. “Rolling on your count.”

Ainsley nods and holds up a hand, fingers ticking down the seconds until she’s got her gaze fixed on Malcolm and begins her spiel. The focused attention is unnervingly similar to Martin’s, he thinks, and nothing at all how she normally looks at him. At least he’ll be on his toes.

“Here with me is Malcolm Bright, a former Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Bright, you focused on profiling criminals like the man you’re now sharing a cell with, and, in fact, have been convicted of the very same crime: serial murder. 

“What is it about your case that’s so special? Why do _you_ deserve a chance to share your story?”

“Well, Ainsley, the fact is, I don’t deserve it. There are thousands of people in our criminal justice system serving time for the crime of being poor or the wrong color. I grew up in a life of privilege—wealthy family, an Ivy League education. That, coupled with America’s obsession with serial killers, is the only reason I’ve been allowed time in front of this camera.” He raises his hands up together to gesture at the steady red light that says it’s recording. From the corner of his eye, he can tell Martin is already agitated, disliking that he’s so clearly flaunting both his background and the handcuffs clasped tightly around his wrists.

“Why the dedication to putting away serial killers? Was it all a ploy? A wolf in wolf’s clothing?”

Malcolm smiles and dips his head. _Boyish, charming._ “No, it wasn’t a ploy. I did my job because I wanted to make the world safer for other people. I know every prisoner says they’re innocent, but unlike the men I arrested and helped put away, I never went to trial.”

“So, you took a plea.”

“I might have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but my family has been through a lot. A public trial would have devastated my mother; I— I couldn’t do that to her.”

“And you think choosing to go on camera now won’t cause the same upset?”

“To be honest, it’ll be worse, because—and you know this, Ainsley,” Malcolm says, swallowing hard as the words die in his throat. It’s enormously difficult to admit it even now during a fake interview and in front of only one witness. In his peripheral, Martin is shifting his weight to lean forward, wondering why he’s hesitating. “Because I’m a Whitly, and I’m sharing a cell with our father, the Surgeon.”

“Malcolm!” Martin says, launching himself from his chair with enough force to send it spinning. He swiftly meets the end of his tether only inches away from Malcolm’s chair as Ainsley scrambles to press her back against the wall and JT moves to cover her.

Malcolm catches the drift of JT’s hand towards the service weapon missing from his hip, but luckily Martin is too focused on him to have noticed.

“What are you doing, son?” he says, stepping back and his gaze flicking now to Ainsley. “This isn’t what we talked about.”

“No, it isn’t. But as you said, everyone loves a good conspiracy. Why point fingers at the Bureau when I can serve up a bigger villain. Everyone who’s watched a documentary about you already believes you were a terrible father who ruined my life.

“You’re in the news constantly again. It’s not much of a leap to convince people you’ve orchestrated a slew of copycats when they already think you’re pulling the strings and arranging a whole new Bouquet via your _apprentice_.”

Martin’s face contorts in disgust. “I am a wonderful father… and Berkhead?” he spits contemptuously. “That fool can hardly tie his own shoes let alone do justice to my Bouquet.”

“But you gave him pages of your journal. You even told him how to mix the paralytic agents.”

“I shared my secrets as a thank you gift, not an instruction manual. Who do you think paid to keep the retrofit in this miserable dump to only two bunks? Although, it doesn’t surprise me that he’d work his way up to killing his wife. That heart attack that sent him to me? He’d gotten overly excited whipping a poor submissive nearly to death. It’s a miracle that man can control his bladder.”

Malcolm opens his mouth to reply when Ainsley beats him to the punch. “Seems like it’s you who can’t manage to control anything, Dr. Whitly,” she says, head tilting to the side as she sizes up their father. “You can’t control people’s perception of you as a horrible father—which you were. You certainly can’t control this interview, or your copycat. You want everyone to believe that you’re some kind of spider in a web here, a serial killer Godfather, but the truth is, you can’t control anyone.”

Lips thinned into a line, Martin tries and fails to keep a snarl off his face. “That’s not true!” he says, large hands balling into fists. He visibly fights to stay silent, but then he’s thrusting a finger towards the door, face contorting as he shouts, “Out there, right now, my old friend John Wa—” 

Malcolm’s eyes go wide when Martin cuts off mid-sentence, the both of them turning to stare as a ringtone warbles out, high and cheery, from JT’s pocket.

“Oh, shit,” JT says, fishing the phone out.

He answers it, which must mean it’s Gil or someone equally important. As Martin tries to understand what’s happening, Malcolm takes a few slow steps back. He drops the key JT had slipped him when they’d fitted him with a mic out of his sleeve to quietly undo his cuffs, his fingers curling around the metal to keep the chain from jangling.

JT’s gaze skips briefly to Malcolm before snapping to Martin. “Repeat again?” he says, slamming his hand against the door to signal for the guard. “Berkhead’s dead?”

With that, Martin knows JT isn’t a simple cameraman, and as quickly as he can, Malcolm lets the cuffs fall and reaches behind himself to undo the lock to the tether stringing to the wall. Martin rounds on him, realization dawning, and somehow Malcolm’s trembling fingers manage to slot the key into the lock. The tether falls to the ground as Martin makes a grab for him, but Ainsley pulls him across the line, out of their father’s reach.

She clings tightly to his arm with both hands, and he gets a brief flash of memory of how she’d done the same before he’d left for boarding school.

“You planned this,” Martin says.

As the door to the cell opens, JT produces Malcolm’s credentials from his front pocket and passes them over. Mr. David trains a taser on Martin. Moments later, another pair of guards arrive.

Malcolm removes the heavy belt and tugs off the uniform top with his prisoner number on it. He leaves both on the floor as one of the guards starts hastily pulling the camera equipment into the hall and out of Martin’s reach.

His father remains unmoving. “My boy, you lied to me the entire time.” The deep furrow between Martin’s brows has smoothed, his expression turning from fury to wonderment.

Of course it has, Malcolm thinks with a sourness in his throat. Martin is drawing a parallel between hiding his own “work” from his family so long ago.

“Well, I’m impressed. Though, the easiest lies to maintain are the ones closest to the truth,” Martin says amiably. He gestures to his chair. “May I?”

Mr. David nods, and Martin pulls the chair back to drop heavily into the seat. Everyone but Malcolm visibly relaxes a touch.

“What now?” Martin asks. “We’ve got ourselves a little family reunion. Maybe your sister would like to hear more about your time here getting _close_ to me again.”

“Leave us,” Malcolm says, pushing Ainsley’s hands off his arm without looking at her. He can’t risk taking his eyes off Martin. “Everyone out, please.”

“You sure?” JT asks.

Malcolm extends a hand towards him as his focus stays trained on his father. “Two minutes, Detective. If Dr. Whitly moves from the chair, open the door. He stands, I walk out. Permanently.”

It takes a second for JT to convince the guards to back down and leave Malcolm alone in the cell one last time with Martin. He stays well behind the line, his back nearly to the door. 

“We both know you’ll be coming back,” Martin says. He idly cleans under his fingernails with the corner of his thumbnail. He blows out a breath and licks the corner of his mouth. “Coming again and again, I’d wager.”

“This bracelet,” Malcolm says, shoving his sleeve back and shaking out his wrist. “It belonged to the girl in the box, didn't it?”

“Whatever pretty face owned it before, it’s yours now, son.”

Malcolm’s nostrils flare on a harsh breath. This is precisely what it would’ve been like if he’d come here in a suit and tie with a visitor badge. “Your friend, John, he took care of Berkhead for you. He’s what, your cleanup man? What’s his last name? Waller? Walker? Washington?”

“Perhaps he’s my John Watson,” Martin suggests with a chuckle then spreads his palms with an easy shrug. “I think I’m going to need us to rebuild a little trust before I tell you any more of my secrets. But don’t be a stranger, Malcolm. My door, and,” he tips his head in a subtle nod to the bed, “other things are _always_ open to you.”

His hesitation shows. It must. He’s bursting with questions—buzzing under his skin like angry wasps. And below that, a hollow yawning ache.

“Goodbye, Dr. Whitly.”

“Don’t be a stranger,” Martin says as Malcolm escapes the cell, and real or imagined, a whisper of “my boy” follows him out like a shadow. 

* * *

  
**_Epilogue: a new beginning_**

It’s a Wednesday morning when Malcolm unpacks the last of three small boxes of belongings retrieved from his DC condo. With no need to move furnishings or kitchenware, it’s a small pile, and it’s not the first time he’s noticed how few personal possessions he has that he maintains any emotional connection to. 

After putting away the personal items and toiletries, he finds new homes for the rest in his loft. The handful of photos that don’t match the decor he tucks away in a drawer, for now. The old NYPD shirt of Gil’s he’d borrowed once and never got around to giving back goes in the trunk at the foot of his bed. The cheap I-Heart-NY snow globe—also from Gil—gets hidden away on his bookshelf behind the Dulac-illustrated 1927 first edition of _Treasure Island_ that Jackie had found in a second-hand store and given to him fifteen years ago. The Cassell & Company version shelved beside it has a few more zeroes of value to a collector, but Jackie’s gift is the one that makes him smile. 

He’s running his fingers down the spine when the door buzzer sounds.

Heading to the door, Malcolm punches the button on the intercom. “Hello?”

Gil’s voice echoes through the speaker. “Delivery for you, city boy.”

Malcolm buzzes him in, unlocking and opening the front door as he goes to hastily pull a pair of pants on. He’s worming his way into a t-shirt when Gil knocks and lets himself in.

“Is that—?” Malcolm eyes the bankers box in Gil’s hands. He tugs the hem of his shirt into place.

“She got delivered to the precinct with a few boxes of case files,” Gil takes his thumbs off the top of the box, and the ball python’s head nudges up the lid. Her tongue flicks out to taste the air.

“Sunshine! Hello, beautiful,” Malcolm says, retrieving the snake from the box and giving her a little once-over before draping her around his shoulders. “I thought she might have ended up there; I was planning to give you a call and stop by this afternoon.”

“Well, I’ve saved you the trip,” Gil says, leaving the empty box on the floor and making himself comfortable on a stool. “So… you’ve taken a leave of absence, and yet you’re having files delivered to my office, hm?”

“News travels fast.”

“What’s the deal, kid? We got the copycat, and between the print and the name, you’ve got a decent lead on this John guy. Hell, you even proved me and your mother wrong about the girl in the box. Why pack up and move back here now?”

Malcolm braces his hands on the edge of the island and looks across it to Gil. He’d been asking himself that very question up to and during submitting his request to the Bureau chiefs. “I need to stay close to my father. The memories I have—more of them are coming back. I need to be able to talk to him, face-to-face, and figure out what’s real and what isn’t. That station wagon from the camping trip he took me on as a boy, there has to be a record of it somewhere.”

There are other reasons, too, that he can’t say aloud. The ugly stain on his soul he needs to work past before it spreads and devours him from the inside out.

Gil’s expression moves between concern and compassion, settling eventually somewhere in the vicinity of resigned affection. “And the files in my office?”

“Well, if I stayed cooped up in here all day, I know you’d complain, so I thought you might be interested in loaning me a desk. In exchange for a bit of help, of course. Some pro-bono profiling on any weird cases that come your way.”

“Uh huh.” Gil folds his arms over his chest, like he knew the offer was coming down the pipe.

Malcolm’s eyes narrow as he gives Gil’s body language a closer read. He straightens and lifts Sunshine away from his shoulders, preparing to move her into her waiting terrarium because this isn’t just a social call. “You have a case right now that you want help with,” he speculates.

“We have a victim found dead in the park with a seriously concerning number of stab wounds.”

“Ooh, I do love a good stabbing,” Malcolm says, grinning. He pulls a face as he realizes how that sounded. “You know what I mean. Let me put Sunshine in her habitat, wash my hands, and put on some real clothes.”

Gil slaps the counter. “I’ll wait in the car.”

“I just need five minutes, then we can go solve this thing,” Malcolm promises, already feeling focused and revitalized in a way that he hasn’t felt for days. He skirts the kitchen island and stops on a dime, pausing to look Gil directly in the eye to voice a quiet and heartfelt thank you. Knowing for sure that he’s not going to be spending months alone diving into his murky tangle of memories and working through everything that he did in the past few weeks shakes loose a few of the shadows that have clung to him since he’d left Claremont.

Gil’s hand coming down to land on his shoulder with a reassuring squeeze dispels a few more. “Glad to have you back, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thank yous to both Kate and Cosmic for helping me wrangle what is the longest thing I've ever written in my lifetime, and to all the folks on the trash server and the goblin server for the encouragement along the way.

**Author's Note:**

> Read more of my [Prodigal Son fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Prodigal+Son+%28TV+2019%29&user_id=ponderosa121), or talk to me about this twink getting wrecked on Twitter [@ponderosa121](https://twitter.com/ponderosa121) or on Discord in [Prodigal Son Trash](https://discord.gg/fQaRgBD).


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